Linking Executive Remuneration with Performance

In recent years, criticism has focused on the apparent lack of relationship between remuneration paid to directors and company performance. This research aim to investigate the relationship between Australian directors' remuneration and their companies' performance, particularly during this recent financial crisis. The sample of this research is taken from Top 200 companies listed on ASX based on their market capitalization. To better understand the relationship of the variables, this research used three approaches. The first approach is to investigate the pay to performance relationship during the global financial crisis. The second approach is to examine the relationship between directors' remuneration and company performance one year before and after the crisis and use these findings to compare with those of during the crisis. The third approach is lead and lag analysis. Overall, this research found a positive and significant relationship between directors' remuneration and company performance during the global financial crisis, with higher sensitivity to market based performance measures than accounting based performance measures.