Wall Street pay practices getting worse, says study

The campaign to reform Wall Street's much-maligned executive pay culture has not been successful, according to a new report.

Commissioned by the Council of Institutional Investors (CII), the Corporate Library study found that remuneration practices at six US financial institutions have in fact got worse since the crisis, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The researchers found that major banks continue to link too much of their pay decisions to short-term results, while many have pushed basic salaries up to counteract regulatory curbs on compensation.

Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the Corporate Library and author of the report, said "very little of any real import has changed" in terms of Wall Street pay structures over recent years.

Amy Borrus, deputy director at the CII, told the newspaper that banks "need to do more to make sure that executive compensation rewards performance over the long term".

The CII, which describes itself as "the voice of corporate governance" in the US, represents a group of pension funds with combined assets of more than $3 trillion (£1.9 trillion).