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Companies that cancel underwater stock options and reissue them-ensuring that executives are protected from market risks on their options aren't doing anything illegal, the author states. On the other hand, is the practice ethical? Ditto for shifting executives' incentives to base salaries shortly before they retire to sweeten their pensions. These are among numerous compensation practices that the author considers unethical. He says that compensation professionals need an ethics code similar to codes for lawyers, doctors, and accountants. Such a code would make companies better and fairer places for employees as well as stockholders. Nevertheless, the author maintains he is not trying to preach a specific ethics code. Instead, he wants to place ethics issues on the compensation agenda for discussion by presenting his views on ethics for compensation practitioners, as well as companies, top management, supervisors, and employees.

Designing compensation and benefits programs for joint ventures entails determining when to use existing plans and when to create new ones.

Asserting that executives should have a financial stake in their companies to give them an ownership perspective, the author assesses how much stock would instill the desired result.

In response to the accounting profession's pressure to revise Opinion 25, the author explains why such changes in current practice would be detrimental to the larger business community.

The company's compensation director is ideally suited to provide the board's compensation committee with vital information on the company's compensation program, philosophy, and strategy.

In this first article of a series, the author takes a snapshot of several different long-term incentives, points out opportunities and problems associated with thern, and traces the trend in contemporary use of each.

While specific questions of interpretation of the compensation-related provisions of the Revenue Act of 1978 should be addressed to counsel, here is a helpful summary of those sections of the Act that will probably lead to immediate and longer-term changes in company compensation programs.

Book-value stock ownership and incentive plans, while not new, have been increasing in popularity since the debacle with market-value stock option plans during the recent recession.