[Melissa Siobhan]

Sorry for asking a possibly novice prospect research question but how and when can you get a person's salary? I was able to use several sources (businessweek.com, Hoovers, etc.) to see prospects salaries. They are high level executives. Then there was one who is General Counsel for a large corporation and could not find his salary anywhere. When do salaries become public information? Should I be able to find this person's salary?

[Karenw]

I've often wondered that myself. I did a quick google search, and came up with this -

Executive Compensation

"In the annual proxy statement, a company must disclose information concerning the amount and type of compensation paid to its chief executive officer, chief financial officer and the three other most highly compensated executive officers"

[hullsa]

Here's how it goes with salaries...

A public company must disclose the total annual compensation (base salary, bonus, extras) for it top 5 executives, but that's it. As Karen noted, this will appear in the proxy - i.e. DEF 14 (definitive proxy statement). You can look them up here:
http://edgarscan.pwcglobal.com/servlets/edgarscan which is a little nicer than the SEC site.

As an aside, this is good site for looking up insider stock holdings: http://www.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/insiders.asp


The Gen Counsel may not be one of the top 5. So, you might try looking for the them here (but might be a little old and pulled from proxies anyway - good for benchmark though):
http://www.law.com/special/professionals/nlj/earn/earns_2.html#5

Another good law one: http://www.infirmation.com/shared/insider/payscale.tcl


Has good general search:
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=General_Counsel/Salary

http://salaryexpert.com/seco/index.cfm?Action=DisplayNAInput&CobrandID=95&area=360000
http://jobstar.org/tools/salary/sal-surv.php

Hope these are helpful!