Aircraft Use Peaks, Security Benefits Climb for U.S. CEOs, ISS-Corporate Study Finds

NEW YORK (January 14, 2026) – ISS-Corporate, a leading provider of robust SaaS and expert advisory services to companies globally, today announced the findings of a study of CEO perquisite usage and magnitude at U.S. public companies in Fiscal Year 2024. Utilizing compensation data of Russell 3000 companies that held annual general meetings through the first ten months of 2025, the report focuses on conventional CEO perquisites among U.S. companies, such as personal use of corporate aircraft and security services.

Key takeaways include:

• Despite making up a small percentage of total CEO compensation, perquisites continue to be a commonly used component of executive pay, with recent security events involving prominent CEOs making them an increasingly central point of discussion among corporate issuers and investors. More than 70 percent of S&P 500 companies provided at least one perquisite to their CEO in Fiscal Year 2024, reaching a five-year high for the index. Among Russell 3000 companies, the prevalence of perquisites remained stable with approximately 43 percent employing at least one perquisite.
• Personal use of corporate aircraft remains among the most common perquisites provided to CEOs, the study found. In Fiscal Year 2024, more than 41 percent of S&P 500 CEOs were provided this benefit, reaching a new peak and continuing a positive trend exhibited in recent years; median value of the perquisite of use of corporate aircraft decreased slightly from the previous year to $149,379. For Russell 3000 companies (excluding companies included in the S&P 500), corporate aircraft usage began to stall in 2024, experiencing a minor drop in prevalence to 7.9 percent.
• The prevalence of security perquisites continues to increase for the S&P 500 and Russell 3000, with the largest annual increases in prevalence seen in 2024 for both indexes. The prevalence of security benefits among S&P 500 companies now stands at a five-year high, with 22.5 percent of companies offering the perk. Adoption rates in the remaining Russell 3000 companies remain low at just 2.7 percent of the index but nevertheless increased significantly in 2024. Given that 2024 saw a major security incident involving a high-profile CEO, the report suggests that the true magnitude of the increase will not be seen until the end of fiscal 2025.
• While perquisites may not play a determining role in investors’ decisions to support Say-on-Pay (MSOP) proposals, the report found that companies providing larger aggregate perquisites tended to have lower MSOP vote support.

To read the full report, please click here.