Company: SPRB
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0000950170-25-059288
Chunk: 26

Company: SPRUCE BIOSCIENCES, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 26
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 In addition, under the charter, the Compensation Committee has the authority to obtain, at the expense of the Company, advice and assistance from compensation consultants and internal and external legal, accounting or other advisors and other external resources that the Compensation Committee considers necessary or appropriate in the performance of its duties. The Compensation Committee has direct responsibility for the oversight of the work of any consultants or advisers engaged for the purpose of advising the Committee. In particular, the Compensation Committee has the sole authority to retain, in its sole discretion, compensation consultants to assist in its evaluation of executive and director compensation. In addition, under the charter, the Compensation Committee may select, or receive advice from, a compensation consultant, legal counsel or other adviser to the compensation committee, other than in-house legal counsel and certain other types of advisers, only after taking into consideration six factors, prescribed by the SEC and Nasdaq that bear upon the adviser’s independence; however, there is no requirement that any adviser be independent.`

In fiscal year 2023, after taking into consideration the six factors prescribed by the SEC and Nasdaq described above, the Compensation Committee engaged Aon Consulting, Inc. (“Aon”) as compensation consultant. As part of its engagement, Aon was requested by the Compensation Committee to develop a comparative group of companies and to perform analyses of competitive performance and compensation levels for that group for purposes of developing recommendations on the amount and form of executive and director compensation that were presented to the Compensation Committee for its consideration. The Compensation Committee did not engage Aon for any consulting services in 2024. In addition, management of the Company engaged affiliates of Aon for other services in 2024 that were not related to Aon’s Compensation Committee consulting services. Specifically, we engaged an affiliate of Aon for insurance brokerage services, for which we paid $150,000 in 2024. Although the Compensation Committee was aware of the nature of these additional services, the committee did not review and approve such services, insurance premiums or policies, as those were reviewed and approved by management in the ordinary course of business.

Aon maintains certain policies and practices to protect the independence of the executive compensation consultants engaged by the Compensation Committee. In particular, Aon provides a report to the Compensation Committee on the financial relationship between Aon and the Company, and provides written assurances that, within Aon, the compensation of the affiliate consultants who perform executive compensation services for the Compensation Committee is determined separately from Aon’s other lines of business and from the other services it provides to the Company. These safeguards