Large shareholders – including asset managers and pension funds – are voting against CEO pay packages, according to US non-profit As You Sow. Although shareholders have become more successful in voting down excessive pay proposals, overall CEO remuneration has continued to rise, the organisation said. Its fifth annual report included a survey of CEO remuneration at companies listed on the S&P 500, which revealed that average pay for an S&P 500 CEO rose from $11.5 million in 2013 to $13.6 million in 2017. The highest paid chief executives were at infrastructure company CSX Corporation ($151 million) and software firm Broadcom ($103 million). At CSX, this equated to 1,539 times the average pay of an employee. As You Sow reported that, if the votes of the world’s three largest asset managers – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street Global Advisors, which tend to approve almost every CEO pay proposal – were excluded, the approval rate would drop dramatically. The organisation said that the three asset managers together controlled 15-20% of the shares of every public company in the US.

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