Legal Series Say on Pay and Executive Compensation Litigation

Ana Damonte is Counsel in the Litigation Section of Pillsbury’s San Francisco office. Ms. Damonte represents clients in securities and commercial litigation involving complex financial and accounting issues. Prior to law school, Ms. Damonte spent several years as an auditor for two large companies and was licensed as a Certified Public Accountant. This real world experience spent analyzing complex business transactions and conducting operational and financial audits gives Ms. Damonte a unique understanding of financial and accounting issues arising in securities and commercial litigation. Over the course of her career, Ms. Damonte has represented officers and directors and/or majority shareholders in actions asserting violations of federal or state securities laws or breach of fiduciary duties.

Steve Seelig is the executive compensation counsel for Towers Watson’s Research and Information Center in Washington, D.C. His expertise includes the taxation, accounting and legal implications (including SEC disclosure requirements) of all forms of executive compensation and perquisite programs.

Martin Somelofske is a Senior Principal and Northeast Practice Leader for Executive Compensation in Hay Group’s Metro New York office.

Martin has 20 years of experience providing executive compensation advisory services to a broad range of public and privately held organizations in diverse industries. Martin advises Boards and executives on all matters related to executive compensation and benefits.

Martin’s expertise centers on performance management, executive reward program design, and the alignment of reward programs with organizational and stakeholder value. In addition, Martin often assists clients with Board governance issues.

Martin is a frequent speaker at national and regional conferences as well as presenting often to Boards and compensation committees. In addition to authoring several published articles, Martin has also made numerous presentations at universities and human resources conferences around the world including those in Dublin, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

Prior to joining Hay Group, Martin was a Managing Director with PwC and was Principal and Practice Leader of the Compensation Consulting Group for Deloitte Consulting LLP in New York. Martin also previously worked with KPMG Peat Marwick and in the Washington, D.C. office of Towers Perrin. He began his career with the Sibson Company in Princeton, N.J.

John is a Member of McDonald Hopkins LLC, in the Executive Compensation and Governance and Employee Benefits practice groups. John has extensive experience assisting mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies with employee benefits and executive compensation issues and opportunities, including benefits issues arising in mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcies, and the design and implementation of qualified and non-qualified retirement and benefits programs including ESOPs, defined benefit and defined contribution plans, cash balance programs, nonqualified deferred compensation plans, stock option and other equity participation programs, VEBAs and SERPs.

For the past four years, John was the national President of one of the largest U.S. employee benefits professional organizations, the Worldwide Employee Benefits (WEB) Network. John frequently speaks on various employee benefits topics and has been quoted and interviewed in numerous magazines and newspapers regionally and nationally.