Study raps Lilly for corporate gobbledygook

Eli Lilly and Co. was among 40 companies cited in a study by Clarity! Communications of Canada Inc. for describing executive pay in prose that’s all but indecipherable to the common person.

In early March, the Indianapolis drugmaker used the following language in a proxy to describe how directors set incentive pay for executives. Directors, “maintained the same total grant values but continued to place greater emphasis on performance-based equity incentives by increasing the performance award portion of executive officers’ equity grants from 40 percent to 50 percent of the total grant value.”