Company: LENZ
Filing Date: 2025-03-19
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001815776-25-000019
Chunk: 151

Company: LENZ Therapeutics, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-19
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 10
Chunk 151
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 financial instruments (including prepaid variable forward contracts, equity swaps, collars and exchange funds), or otherwise engaging in transactions that hedge or offset, or are designed to hedge or offset, any decrease in the market value of equity securities granted to them by us as part of their compensation or held, directly or indirectly, by them, (4) pledging any of our securities as collateral for any loans and (5) holding our securities in a margin account.

Corporate Governance Guidelines and Code of Business Conduct and Ethics

Our board of directors has adopted corporate governance guidelines. These guidelines address, among other items, the qualifications and responsibilities of our directors and director candidates, the structure and composition of our board of directors and corporate governance policies and standards applicable to us in general. In addition, our board of directors has adopted a code of business conduct and ethics that applies to all of our employees, officers and directors, including our principal executive officer, principal financial officer, principal accounting officer and other executive and senior financial officers. The full text of our corporate governance guidelines and code of business conduct and ethics are available on our website at https://ir.lenz-tx.com/corporate-governance/governance-documents. We will post amendments to our code of business conduct and ethics or any waivers of our code of business conduct and ethics for directors and executive officers on the same website.

Director Compensation

Director Compensation Policy

Our board of directors expects to review director compensation periodically to ensure that director compensation remains competitive such that we are able to recruit and retain qualified directors. In 2023, the compensation committee of the LENZ OpCo board of directors retained Aon, a third-party compensation consultant, to provide the LENZ OpCo board of 

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directors and its compensation committee with an analysis of publicly available market data regarding practices and compensation levels at comparable companies and assistance in determining compensation to be provided to LENZ Therapeutics’ non-employee directors. Based on the discussions with and assistance from the compensation consultant, in connection with the Merger, our board of directors adopted an Outside Director Compensation Policy that provides for certain compensation to our non-employee directors. The Outside Director Compensation Policy became effective as of the closing of the Merger.

Cash Compensation

The Outside Director Compensation Policy provides for the following cash compensation program for our non-employee directors:

•$40,000 per year for service as a non-employee director;

•$30,000 per year for service as non-employee chair of our board of directors;

•$