Company: ISRG
Filing Date: 2025-03-14
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001035267-25-000098
Chunk: 99

Company: INTUITIVE SURGICAL INC
Filing Date: 2025-03-14
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 99
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 since the beginning of 2024. The Company’s operational growth and commitment to exceptional performance could not be realized without an executive compensation program that is designed to attract, retain, and motivate passionate leaders who can thrive in the competitive business environment in which we operate.

The Company’s executive severance program, which currently only provides for severance benefits for a qualifying termination within 12 months of a change in control of the Company, is designed and tailored to further our compensation philosophy of aligning executives’ interests with those of stockholders, while balancing the need to maintain a competitive executive compensation program that attracts and retains critical talent in a very competitive labor market.

Unsurprisingly given our competitive landscape, only one of our compensation peer group companies currently discloses a stockholder approval policy for severance packages. The rest of our compensation peer group does not disclose any stockholder approval policies for executive severance arrangements. In light of our peer practices, implementing a stockholder approval policy for severance packages would put us at a competitive disadvantage, as the proposed policy would severely restrict our ability to develop competitive executive retention packages, particularly in periods of intense labor competition or in the context of a change in control. Further, the delay, uncertainty, and expense of seeking stockholder approval for agreements with key executives demonstrate the impracticality and inflexibility of this proposal.

The Company’s executive compensation policies already reflect reasonable and appropriate limits on severance payments, and, accordingly, the proposal seeks to address a supposed problem that, in fact, does not exist at our Company.

The Board believes that our existing severance program effectively aligns our executive compensation program with sustained value creation for our stockholders.

We believe that post-termination compensation schemes are essential to safeguarding our interests, including by procuring ongoing executive cooperation following termination, aligning executive and stockholder interests in a change-in-control scenario, and attracting and retaining talent generally. We provide limited post-termination benefits through our Change-in-Control Plan, and we believe our executive compensation program and the Change-in-Control Plan already include reasonable and appropriate limitations on post-termination compensation. Under the terms of our executive compensation program, executive severance packages are currently not provided outside of a change in control of the Company, and, even then, they are only available for qualifying terminations that occur within 12 months following a change in control of the Company. Moreover, based on an analysis of what our current executive team would receive in the event of a qualifying termination within 12 months following a change in control, the cash severance