Equilar is a California-based company that provides information about total executive compensation

Executive compensation

Executive pay is financial compensation received by an officer of a firm, often as a mixture of salary, bonuses, shares of and/or call options on the company stock, etc. Over the past three decades, executive pay has risen dramatically beyond the rising levels of an average worker's wage...

 packages of the top officers at publicly traded companies.

Founded in 2000 by CEO David Chun, Equilar maintains an information database of the total compensation—base salary, short-term incentives (bonuses), long-term incentive plans (LTIP), employee benefits, perquisites (perks), and compensation protection (Golden parachute

Golden parachute

A golden parachute is an agreement between a company and an employee specifying that the employee will receive certain significant benefits if employment is terminated. Sometimes, certain conditions, typically a change in company ownership, must be met, but often the cause of termination is...

s) — of over 20,000 executives of public companies that disclose with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

As public interest in executive compensation has grown, Equilar's research is frequently cited in Bloomberg

Bloomberg Markets

Bloomberg Markets is a monthly magazine published by Bloomberg L.P.. It is aimed at financial experts and professionals. It focuses on financial decisions and philosophies of major personalities in the financial world, such as the CEOs of large banks and the people who wield political power over...

, BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek

Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...

, Reuters

Reuters

Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...

, The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....

 and other media publications.

Headquartered in Redwood Shores, CA, Equilar has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in America by Deloitte, Inc. magazine and the Silicon Valley Business Journal.