CEO pay ratio tax bill may gain new life in Congress as revenue stream

Corporate executive compensation, in particular the pay ratio compared with rank-and-file employees, has resurfaced as a U.S. Senate Democratic revenue initiative.

A group of progressive Democratic senators, led by Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, introduced the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act in March. A similar proposal has been submitted in the U.S. House. READ MORE

CEOs promised to take pay cuts during the pandemic. Did they?

When the pandemic struck last year, many CEOs across the globe announced they’d cut their own salaries. Now that we’re 17 months into this crisis, it prompts the question: Did business leaders go through with this pledge? While the COVID-19 recession was among the hardest initial economic shocks ever experienced, it was also followed by one of the fastest economic recoveries on record. Some businesses even boomed during the pandemic.

To see how many companies followed through on their leadership pay cuts, Fortune partnered with Diligent, a leading New York–based SaaS GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) company. For the analysis, Diligent looked at Russell 3000 companies—an index of the largest 3,000 U.S. companies by market capitalization. READ MORE