Citigroup investors yesterday rejected the company's board-approved compensation package for its senior executives.
The rebuke demonstrates that even very large firms are at risk for no votes and that shareholder support can vanish rapidly.
While most companies got a pass on last year's Say-On-Pay vote (only 2% of companies that filed proxy statements failed their SOP votes), 2012 is proving more challenging; of 175 companies that have held Say-On-Pay votes so far this year, almost five times as many (9.6%) have been shot down.
While the Citigroup vote may augur similar say-on-pay defeats at other major financial services firms, if performance has not matched sizable increases in top management's compensation, other industries are at risk as well. KB Home, International Game Technology and Actuant Corp. also saw their pay practices receive less than a majority of votes.