A new federal rule will require public companies to list their chief executives’ total annual compensation as a ratio to their workers’ median pay, after the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted the rule,  required by the  Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  The agency received more than 280,000 public comments in support of the pay ratio rule.

BUT!  There has to be a “but”!

–  the rule gives companies discretion on how to interpret the measure, under which many public companies must publish “the ratio of the annual total compensation of the chief executive officer to the median of the annual total compensation of the company’s employees.”

– companies are given leeway on determining their median employees’ pay, such as provisions that allow them to use statistical sampling to define the compensation of their median employees once every three years.

–  excluded from the requirement are  “emerging growth” and small companies, defined  as those with less than $1 billion in annual gross revenue. (You have to be joking!   A billion dollars! Ed.)

Critics of the rule say it would impose an expensive new bookkeeping requirement on companies. To which I would reply, “only if you have no computers and do your accounting using a quill pen and indian ink”.  Any competent software writer could devise a program for producing the necessary figures within a couple of days.  How the

But at least the new rule encompasses the banks and big financial organizations, which was the original point.  So  – a qualified hooray.     (based on an NPR report  August 2015)