A recently released study of board of directors compensation by Hewitt details the shifting trends of board compensation over the past few years.

The study reveals that about 42% of director compensation is in the form of "retainer" fees (non-contingent compensation paid for membership on the board, typically paid in for the form of cash), about 15% is in the form of meeting attendance and/or committee fees, while the remainder (43%) is in the form of equity/stock.  See the chart below for a graphical view (thanks to Hewitt and the Compensation Force blog for the graphic).

Other Interesting Information:

The study, which focused on public companies (the only ones required to report this kind of data) also reported that:

• About two-thirds of companies in the study had stock ownership retention guidelines that require board members to retain a certain amount of stock (commonly as a multiple of their annual retainer).
• Committee heads typically receive additional cash retainer compensation (the median was $10,000 annually for audit and compensation committee chairs).  This data has remained fairly stable for the past two years.
• Most retainer fees are paid in the form of cash.  A small minority of firms pay in the form of stock or via a stock/cash mix.
• Additional retainer fees are typically paid to "lead directors" (the lead non-employee/independent director) and non-employee board chairpersons.

The report summary is nearly 70 pages in length, so if this is a topic of interest to your work, please click on the link for more information.