executive compensation committee Archives

Governing Health Podcast | 2025 Executive Compensation Committee: Key Priorities and Strategic Insights

by Michael W. Peregrine and Jeffrey Holdvogt | Apr 15, 2025 | Executive Compensation

This special quarterly series of the Governing Health podcast with SullivanCotter highlights developments in and offers support to the board’s executive compensation committee as it navigates a range of complex operational, technical, and strategic challenges.

In this episode, Michael Peregrine, Tim Cotter, Bruce Greenblatt, Kathy Hastings, and Jeff Holdvogt offer recommendations for the committee to focus on in 2025, including:

Establishing appropriate incentive goals in an evolving health system
Prioritizing executive succession planning/leadership development
Keeping appraised of regulatory and market trends
Ensuring flexibility and defensibility in committee approval processes
Aligning key governance documents to fulfill committee fiduciary duties
Evaluating committee reporting and coordination with other board committees
Overseeing executive compensation in for-profit and not-for-profit ventures subsidiaries
Considering board compensation trends in not-for-profit health systems
Determining the need to evolve committee composition
Addressing executive compensation scrutiny

Listen on Spotify.

Addressing DOJ’s New Compliance Focus on Executive Compensation

by Ralph E. DeJong, Michael W. Peregrine, Sarah Walters and Eugene I. Goldman | May 19, 2023 | Executive Compensation

The new compliance focus on executive compensation, as announced by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on March 3, 2023, has significant implications for how healthcare organizations address both corporate compliance and compensation programs for their executives. It also raises new issues for the board of directors’ oversight of compliance and compensation functions.

In a recent webinar, McDermott’s Ralph E. DeJong, Michael W. Peregrine, Sarah E. Walters and Eugene I. Goldman discussed the new policies, possible responses by management and boards, and potential strategies for responding to the policy goals of the DOJ and the Delaware Chancery Court.

Access the webinar and top takeaways here.

Insights and Challenges for the Executive Compensation Committee

by Michael W. Peregrine and Ralph E. DeJong | Nov 30, 2022 | Executive Compensation, Labor

The board’s executive compensation committee is the focus point for many of the extraordinary financial, economic and operating challenges currently facing healthcare organizations. Executive compensation increases are impacted by both an inflationary economy and significant revenue downturn. In addition, the US Department of Justice has identified executive compensation as an important conduit through by which corporate compliance incentives and deterrence can be implemented. Furthermore, executive recruitment and retention amidst the “Great Resignation” remains a key compensation concern.

These and similar issues have become important agenda items for the board’s executive compensation Committee. Michael Peregrine is joined by industry experts Tim Cotter and Ralph DeJong for the first in a two-part conversation about the impact of the developments on the compensation committee, including:

Key topics for briefing the board’s compensation committee.
Increasing communication between the compensation committee and the C-Suite.
Addressing pressures felt by executive committee members.
Insights from the Sullivan Cotter compensation data survey.
Projections for the impact of inflation on next year’s salary increases.
Expectations for future CEO salary increases and organization departures.
The segmenting approach to leadership plans.
Coordination with the Audit & Compliance Committee on compensation incentives

Access the podcast.

How the Tax Act Upsets the Board/Executive Compensation Committee Dynamic

by Michael W. Peregrine and Ralph E. DeJong | Jan 23, 2018 | Executive Compensation

Michael Peregrine and Ralph DeJong wrote this bylined article about what they called the “enormous consequences” for tax-exempt hospital senior executive compensation due to the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions that place an excise tax on executive compensation and benefits. “From a corporate governance perspective, the significance of these new provisions carries the potential for recalibrating the relationship between the board and its executive compensation committee,” the authors wrote.

Originally published in Bloomberg BNA’s Health Law Reporter, January 2018.