Today’s Federal Register is here. This article by Craig Schneider–“Congress, FASB in Stock Option Flap: Dreier-Eshoo bill would prevent expensing of stock options — and derail FASB initiative“–at CFO.com points out that tomorrow morning, the House Financial Services Capital Markets Subcommittee will hold a hearing on HR 1372, the Broad-Based Stock Option Plan Transparency Act, a bill which was introduced by Reps. David Dreier (R-Calif.) and Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) on March 20. The bill would require greater disclosure of corporate stock options, but would commission a three-year study on the effects of such disclosure. During the study, new accounting standards would not be recognized which would delay any changes promulgated by FASB. Also, see this article at the WashingtonPost.com by Jackie Spinner: “Executives Resigned To Their Options: Change in Accounting Rules Would Cost Some Local Companies.”
401(k) plans are “tiptoeing back into stocks” as reported in this article by John Waggoner and Christine Dugas for USA Today (via Yahoo! News). The article states that the 401(k) Index from Hewitt Associates, which tracks 1.5 million participants, indicates investors moved into stocks for 14 out of the 21 trading days in April which was the first time since January of 2000 that the Index recorded so many days in which investors shifted 401(k) assets into stock funds.
There is a very good article at Workforce.com showing trends in executive compensation. The article–“Executive Compensation: Recent Trends, Changes, and Highlights” discusses the results of a study performed by Sibson Consulting, the human-capital consulting division of The Segal Company, which reviewed a random sampling of large-company proxy statements filed with the SEC. The article contains tables showing the executive compensation provided by various companies, such as Merck and Eastman Kodak.