After a Bad Pay Vote, Boards Don't Change When They Grant. Some Stop Granting.

Using the observable equity-grant calendar, we ask what boards actually did after a low-support advisory vote. Of 1,926 companies that held a 2026 executive-compensation vote, 102 drew support below 70% — the low-support cohort — and of those, 85 still passed while 17 fell below half (true rejections). For each company that granted after the vote, we compare the grant date to the anniversary of its nearest grant a year earlier, against a matched control of 117 companies whose plans passed. The vote did not move the grant calendar: 50% of low-support companies granted within two weeks of their own prior-year date, against 40% of passers — a 10-point difference with a 95% confidence interval of minus 13 to plus 33 (p = 0.40) — and equally null at one week (41 against 35) and at 30 days (56.2 against 52.5). Granting propensity, however, falls as support falls: 43% of covered passers granted officer equity in the window, 37% of companies at 50–70% support, and 20% of true rejections (3 of 15 observable) — an ordered trend at p = 0.09. At 15 observable rejections the interval on 3 of 15 spans roughly 4% to 48%, so this is a hypothesis the rest of the season can sharpen, not a conclusion. The annual grant calendar, treated as clockwork in most commentary, is looser than assumed for everyone, vote or no vote. Figures as of August 4, 2026.

Working paper prepared for the SSRN Corporate Governance Network. Data source: Velarion Say-on-Pay Open Dataset, CC BY 4.0, 10.5281/zenodo.22283854.

Descriptive analysis. No investment advice, no recommendation about any security or vote, and no forecast of future pay.