Social investors have long been interested in executive compensation. The pay packages of CEOs occasionally attract attention from the mainstream press, too, and the June 12 issue of The Economist weighs in on the issue.

Three different articles consider executive pay, and they follow different paths to the same general conclusion. Yes, the authors agree, it’s possible that companies overpay their executives – especially in the U.S. – but it’s hard to say how much compensation is too much. The first article, “Pay Attention,” includes this sweeping statement:

“It is near impossible, of course, to determine the correct absolute level of executive pay.”

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The Sustainable Endowment Institute (SEI) recently released its College Sustainability Report Card. According to its Executive Summary, the Report Card “seeks to encourage sustainability as a priority in college operations and endowment investment practices by offering independent yearly assessments of progress.”

Institutions of higher education have played a significant role in SRI at least since the South African divestment movement of the 1980s. The Report Card examines both the investment practices of these schools and the sustainability of core university operations.

SEI finds that “the level of campus sustainability initiatives far outpaces that of endowment sustainability activity.” Responsible food-service and recycling practices, for example, earned “A” grades for 29% of schools. Only 4% of colleges achieved the same grade for their “Endowment Transparency.”

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‘Precatory proposals’: this phrase from Purgatory has quickly entered the lexicon of those defending access to non-binding shareholder resolutions. Its users should wash their spell checkers out with soap.

‘Precatory proposals’, as I wrote a few weeks ago, is a phrase apparently invented by Leo E. Strine, Jr. Strine is a lecturer at Harvard Law School and a judge in Delaware, and he is no friend of non-binding resolutions. He’d like to see them abolished.

So, those who’ve adopted the phrase – which sounds very legal, very precise – should know what ‘precatory’ means and implies.

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Update 1

SEC Chair, Christopher Cox, announced in testimony before the US House Committee on Financial Services that the SEC will issue new proxy rules before the next proxy season:

‘In connection with the Commission’s review of our proxy rules governing shareholder proposals, we have just completed a series of roundtables that considered, among other issues, the future role of technology in facilitating communications not only between shareholders and their company, but also directly among shareholders themselves. As we prepare to put new proxy rules in place in time for the next proxy season to address the implications of the court’s decision in AFSCME v. AIG, the Commission is also considering ways to facilitate greater online interaction among shareholders by removing any obstacles in the current rules, such as the ambiguity concerning whether use of an electronic shareholder forum could constitute a proxy solicitation.’

FinancialWeek.com reported Cox indicated the regulations (regs) would appear next month.

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For a couple of generations, commentators have described SRI as a three-legged stool:

• shareholder advocacy,

• screening and

• community investing

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