Company: ADAMM
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001273685-25-000038
Chunk: 56

Company: ADAMAS TRUST, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 56
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 year.

Compensation Benchmarking and Use of Peer Groups

In 2019, the Compensation Committee engaged an independent compensation consultant, FPL Associates, L.P. ("FPL"), in part, to benchmark the compensation levels and practices relating to our NEOs and other officers against a larger sample size of industry-based compensation levels and practices. With the assistance of FPL, the Compensation Committee conducted a benchmarking analysis for 2019 with respect to the compensation levels and practices of our NEOs. In the fall of 2019, Pearl Meyer was engaged to benchmark base salaries, total annual compensation (i.e., base salary + compensation paid under our annual incentive plan) and total direct compensation (i.e., base salary + compensation paid under our annual incentive plan + target payouts under our Long-Term EIPs).

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Since 2019, the Compensation Committee has engaged Pearl Meyer from time to time to conduct a market pay analysis for our NEOs compared to the NEOs of our peer group and to recommend changes, as necessary, to maintain or improve competitiveness for talent. In 2023, Pearl Meyer again reviewed the peer group used by the Compensation Committee in its compensation considerations. While it is the Compensation Committee’s goal to provide compensation opportunities that are responsive to both individual and corporate-level performance and that are competitive within industry standards and among our peers, the Compensation Committee has not established a policy of directly linking compensation for our NEOs to any specific target market percentile for NEO pay levels. The Compensation Committee has historically taken the view that because pay practices and compensation levels among participants in our industry can vary significantly from one year to the next and the information regarding those practices and levels is often times outdated by the time it becomes publicly available, the use of a specific target market position may not necessarily reflect the Compensation Committee’s assessment of performance as the primary driver of pay levels. Instead, the Compensation Committee attempts to structure our executive compensation program for our NEOs in a manner that is both competitive enough to retain their services and appropriately rewards their performance, but is also consistent with our needs from an expense perspective.

At the outset of the benchmarking process, the Compensation Committee reviewed, with the assistance of its compensation consultant, the possible composition of our peer group, including the size of the peer group and the rationale for including certain companies, each of which have similarity to us based on one or more factors, including business focus, size and/or geography. Because of the limited compensation information available for mortgage REITs, the Compensation Committee has, with