A record one-third of the top 100 publicly-traded Swiss companies are giving their shareholders a vote on director pay packages in 2011, as the ‘say on pay’ bandwagon sweeps around the world. The US market regulator voted to introduce similar non-binding shareholder votes yesterday.

There is no legal obligation on companies to hold such votes in Switzerland, but Swiss ethical-investment foundation Ethos says the government is considering a change to company law to make the vote compulsory. But any change is unlikely before 2013 or 2014, said Vinzenz Mathys, a spokesman for the Ethos foundation, a leading campaigner on the issue.