The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to roll out a plan today that would require companies to disclose how much more their chief executives are paid than their other employees, the Washington Post reported today. The SEC has been struggling with the initiative since 2010, when it was tucked into the Dodd-Frank Act in response to public outrage about excessive executive pay. Earlier attempts to get the plan off the ground faltered after fierce opposition from corporate lobbyists, who cast the mandate as overly burdensome. If approved, the proposal would require all public companies to disclose their chief executives’ total compensation, the median compensation of all other employees, and the ratio between the two. Congress inserted the 18-line mandate into the 2,300-page law, known as the Dodd-Frank Act. But the law left it up to the SEC to decide on the logistics. The agency plans to gather comments from the public before finalizing a plan.
