Mike Melbinger is the lead partner and global head of Winston & Strawn's employee benefits and executive compensation practice group He works out of the firm's Chicago office and practices exclusively in the area of
executive compensation and employee retirement benefit issues for corporations, boards of directors, partnerships, executives, and fiduciaries. He has worked extensively on designing and implementing stock and non-stock based executive compensation and benefit programs for public
and private companies (including start-up ventures).
He has designed and drafted employment contracts, severance agreements, parachute agreements, and a variety of executive compensation arrangements. He advises boards of directors, compensation committees, and senior executives and legal
departments in these matters.
This HR compliance training will focus on the increasingly critical area of complicated of compensation clawback. It will focus on evolving best practices in the design and drafting of compensation clawback provisions. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 introduced the requirement of compensation clawbacks into law. Following the financial crisis of 2008-2009, many corporations began to develop and implement compensation clawback policies as part of their efforts to improve corporate governance. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act includes a provision that will require every publicly traded company in America to adopt compensation clawback policy.
Deducting annual bonuses in the wrong year (generally one-year too early) is one of the most common mistakes made by tax, accounting, legal and human resources professionals in corporate America.