The NCEO is one of the only sources of compensation data focused exclusively on employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs).
This year, the NCEO gathered comprehensive data from ESOP companies on both executive compensation and board director compensation, along with board makeup and demographic questions. From August 2023 to September 2023, 383 valid responses were received. All respondents are privately held companies with an ESOP. Most are S corporations (92%) and 86% are 100% ESOP-owned.
Full results from the survey are now available on the executive and board director compensation survey page. The 57-page report includes an appendix with separate tables for each survey item broken out by the largest industry groups, along with percent owned by the ESOP, number of employees, and revenue.
Tables 1A and 1B below provide information on forms of pay (base, cash, and stock-based) as percentage of total pay.
In addition, the survey collected data about boards of directors that included size, composition, and compensation. Respondents provided information on total compensation, as well as any retainers, meeting fees, and equity compensation paid for inside, affiliated, and independent directors.
Table 2 provides more details about the composition of respondents’ boards according to director categories.
Figure 1 below shows a breakdown of the size of boards across respondents.