Poor disclosure of executive perks in the past may have significantly masked the level at which many companies are granting the perks and their associated costs, according to an analysis by The Corporate Library.
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The study found that the disclosed costs of providing executive benefits and perquisites has increased on average by more than 130 percent between the 2005 disclosures and those made in 2006.
"It isn't so much that shareholders didn't know how much these perks were costing them--they didn't even know they were being provided," says Paul Hodgson, The Corporate Library's senior research associate for executive compensation.