If the goal of compensation clawbacks is to keep corporate executives honest, then they aren’t doing the job, according to a report by The New York Times.

As evidence, writer Gretchen Morgenson points to recent action by Wells Fargo’s board. The bank’s directors acted on Tuesday to recover $60 million in stock grants from two top executives after a phony-account-opening scandal rocked the company and its executives. But the move came almost three years after the improprieties came to light.

There are several reasons givebacks are rare, Morgenson reports: “One is that corporations limit the scope of their recovery policies. For example, the policies are written to cover only a portion of an executive’s pay.”

“Clawbacks extending to all types of compensation are uncommon,” James F. Reda, managing director of executive compensation consulting at Arthur J. Gallagher & Company, told the reporter. “They typically only apply to the cash portion and only to the top executives.”

Read the article.

The Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University recently conducted a nationwide survey of 1,202 individuals — representative by gender, race, age, political affiliation, household income, and state residence — to understand public perception of CEO pay levels among the 500 largest publicly traded corporations.

“74 percent of Americans believe that CEOs are not paid the correct amount relative to the average worker,” the survey found. “Only 16 percent believe that they are. While responses vary across demographic groups (e.g., political affiliation and household income), overall sentiment regarding CEO pay remains highly negative.

Key takeaways are:

• CEOs are vastly overpaid, according to most Americans
• Most support drastic reductions
• The public is divided on government intervention

Download the survey.