The Bedford Group has released its 2023 Executive and Board Compensation and Governance Report for the clean technology industry. The report gathers detailed compensation data from 155 Canadian and U.S. clean technology companies, covering almost 700 named executive officers and over 1,000 board members.
“Despite economic uncertainty, the future looks necessarily bright for the cleantech industry,” said Amrit Sandhu, client partner at Bedford Consulting Group. “But to tackle ongoing difficulties like labour shortages, limited access to capital, and rising salaries, companies will need to be more strategic when hiring and retaining fresh talent.”
In the C-Suite, the largest turnover rate observed in Bedford’s dataset was amongst CFOs, where 21.3 per cent of companies had at least one CFO changeover in 2022 – more than double the 2021 rate of 9.6 per cent. Comparatively, 12.9 per cent of companies reported at least one new or former CEO in 2022 compared to 10.2 per cent in 2021.
This level of turnover, inflation, and shortage of talent puts upward pressure on wages across most organizations. As a result, CEOs and CFOs in companies with market caps over $400 million saw an increase in median base salary and total compensation from 2021. However, juniors with market caps under $400 million, who may not have easy access to revenue/capital, had significantly lower equity and non-equity compensation compared to the previous year, resulting in lower total direct compensation.
Despite pressure for increased diversity and female representation in the cleantech industry, women remain underrepresented. While female membership on boards was consistent between 2021 (24%) and 2022 (23.8%), the percentage of female CEOs has dropped to 4.4 per cent compared to 5.2 per cent in 2021. Overall, 12.2 per cent of NEOs were women in the 2022 fiscal year – an increase of just 0.5 per cent from the previous year.
Bedford’s Executive and Board Compensation and Governance Report highlights year-over-year compensation changes at the board and executive level for base salary/retainers, equity and non-equity incentives and total compensation. The 2023 report also includes information and guidance around good governance and reporting best practices in the areas of diversity, board composition, severance and change of control benefits, share ownership, and problematic pay practices.
The Bedford Consulting Group is the North American partner of TRANSEARCH International, one of the Top 10 largest executive search firms in the world, with 60 offices in 40 countries.
The 2023 Executive and Board Compensation and Governance Report – Clean Technology can be accessed here.
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