Company Representation

"Coming together is beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." 
                                                                                         
-Henry Ford

That philosophy is at the heart of win-win results-two sides working together to successfully structure a creative solution. The Executive Compensation Group of Vedder Price is a team of attorneys that leverages experience and leadership skills to create win-win solutions. As more companies look outside of their organizations for talented individuals to fill top positions, this type of skilled advice becomes even more important.  Executive employment and compensation arrangements have never been more complex, often requiring expert advice from across disciplines such as competitive pay benchmarking, equity make-whole analysis, accounting treatment, securities law disclosure, estate planning, tax law, retirement and financial planning, and employee benefits and pension law. The Executive Compensation Group has extensive experience with these areas and leverages the full range of VedderPrice in-house resources to create and complete the plan or arrangement that is optimal for each corporate client.

A History of Successful Negotiations

Since 1980, the Executive Compensation Group has developed unique skill and experience in analyzing, negotiating, and documenting senior executive employment and compensation arrangements. The competition for the most talented executives and the need for strict confidentiality, combined with the complexity of the compensation components, have placed a premium on creating customized executive compensation agreements. Our lawyers have extensive experience advising corporate compensation and search committees in coordination with the human resource and legal departments.  We have dealt extensively with:

• CEO and other senior executive peer compensation analysis, employment agreements and severance arrangements.
• Change-in-control agreements and other officer and employee protection programs.
• Special retention programs.
• Annual cash incentive plans.
• Long-term cash incentive plans.
• Equity-based incentive plans using stock options, restricted stock, stock appreciation rights, performance units, phantom stock and other equity-based interests.
• Deferred compensation arrangements.
• Supplemental executive retirement plans (SERPs).
• Director compensation analysis and arrangements.
• Indemnification arrangements.

Structuring Solutions-Building Relationships

When retained by a corporation, our role is to assist the Company and its Board of Directors to face the challenges involved with executive compensation, recruitment and retention issues.  Although compensation committees want to be competitive in terms of the senior executive compensation plans, they also want to be responsible to the shareholders.  In the best of circumstances, this is obviously a difficult balancing act.  Whatever the challenge, the VedderPrice team brings a wealth of experience together with a practical approach to help achieve the goals of both the executive and the Company.

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