Company: ISRG
Filing Date: 2025-03-14
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001035267-25-000098
Chunk: 93

Company: INTUITIVE SURGICAL INC
Filing Date: 2025-03-14
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 93
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1745 Copperleaf Ct, Concord, CA 94519, owner of 14 shares of our common stock, intends to present the following stockholder proposal at the 2025 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the “Annual Meeting”). If the stockholder is present at the Annual Meeting and properly submits the proposal for a vote, then the stockholder proposal will be voted upon at the Annual Meeting. In accordance with federal securities laws, the stockholder proposal is presented below as submitted by the stockholder and is quoted verbatim. The Company disclaims all responsibility for the content of the proposal and the supporting statement, including other sources referenced in the supporting statement.

Resolved : Stockholders recommend that Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (our Company) improve the executive compensation program to include the CEO pay ratio factor.

Supporting Statement : The Economic Policy Institute found that “from 1978–2023, top CEO compensation shot up 1,085%, compared with a 24% increase in a typical worker’s compensation.” 1 America’s ballooning executive compensation is not sustainable for the economy, and there is no rational methodology to decide the executive compensation, particularly because there is no consideration of the CEO pay ratio. The increase of disparity of income has a direct negative impact on American social order. The CEO pay ratios of big Japanese and European companies are much less than of big American companies.

The American corporate boards and executives have become a class of oligarchy, as defined by Aristotle, according to his _ Politics _. In this great classic, Aristotle demonstrated that in a stable community (polis), the ratio of the rich citizen’s land to the poor citizen’s land should not be over 5 to 1. Our Company’s CEO pay ratio was 111: 1 in 2023 (Notice of the 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders and Proxy Statement p.59), jumped from 81:1 in 2022 (Notice of the 2023 Annual Meeting of Stockholders and Proxy Statement p.60). This is against the trend: shareholders in JPMorgan Chase & Co., Intel, Netflix, Salesforce and other big companies rejected sky-high executive pay packages in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Adam Smith said: “Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power.” As a social contract, the American public gives the corporate board the power to run the corporate business without organized unions in most companies, without employee representation in the board; and the board is nominated and elected without any competition (