From the editor.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Editorial

Complaints about "excessive" executive pay have been around for years, but the noise has seemed to reach a new level in recent months. One factor has been reports of huge paydays for severed executives. Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission released a set of proposals that are expected to dramatically raise the level of disclosure that public companies will be required to provide on compensation for top executives.

This will certainly raise the governance stakes for the board and its compensation committee, and a related theme is a growing body of governance ratings on public companies, issued by a number of firms. New since 2002, these ratings have become an important benchmark for big investors but something of a bother for many companies, which have little input into the rating process.

Our FEI@75 feature salutes FEI's volunteer leaders over the years, with much of it in their own words or those of those who worked with them. Past chairman talk about important issues they wrestled with or helped decide during their time at the top. The article, compiled by Executive Editor Ellen M. Heffes, offers a snapshot of the leaders' challenges to simultaneously keep up with events and move the association forward.

If ethics programs are any clue to how ethical business is, it should be the most ethical institution in society, writes Gregory J. Millman. Yet those programs--many instituted in the wake of scandals like Enron Corp. and Tyco International--haven't really had much measurable effect in curbing fraud or deceit. Creating an ethical corporate culture, and drafting clear-cut rules in a multicultural world, represent forbidding challenges.

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