William Mercer Studies Assesses Popularity of Broad Stock Options

A new study of the Wall Street Journal 350 by William M. Mercer shows that 10.6% of these large companies have broad stock option plans to which they either have made allocations or will this year. Another 20% of the companies have broad-based plans on paper, but have yet to make a distribution beyond the executive level. Mercer defines "broad-based" as going to at least 50% of a company's work force.