DRS 17
Active
Reporting on the remuneration of executive and supervisory board members
Berichterstattung über die Vergütung der Organmitglieder
1
Scope – Deliberately Kept Separate From DRS 20's Consolidation
A genuinely deliberate exclusion from the 2012 consolidation wave
Recall from the withdrawn-standards portion of this library: when DRS 20 folded DRS 5 (risk reporting) and DRS 15/15a (general Lagebericht/takeover content) into one comprehensive standard, DRS 17's own executive remuneration reporting content was EXPLICITLY left standing as its own separate standard – the DRSC's own project documentation directly confirms this was a deliberate choice, not an oversight, reflecting how remuneration disclosure sits at the intersection of accounting and corporate GOVERNANCE law (particularly VorstAG, the 2009 Executive Remuneration Appropriateness Act) in a way the DRSC judged warranted its own dedicated, more frequently and independently updated standard.
2
Core Content
What the standard requires
Individualised disclosure of each management/supervisory board member's own remuneration components A clear distinction between fixed and performance-related (variable) compensation Disclosure of pension commitments and other long-term benefits Explanation of the underlying remuneration system's own structure and objectives
Genuinely frequently amended
DRS 17 has been amended repeatedly (2010, DRÄS 6 in 2016, and further updates alongside DRÄS 11 in 2021) – reflecting how remuneration transparency remains a live, evolving area of German corporate governance policy, considerably more dynamic than some of the more settled measurement-focused standards in this library.
3
Worked Example – Individualised Board Remuneration Disclosure
Disclosing a management board member's compensation structure
A listed AG's CEO receives a €600,000 fixed base salary, a €400,000 performance-related bonus tied to specific financial targets, and a pension commitment valued at €150,000 for the year.
Under DRS 17, the Konzernanhang discloses each of these THREE components SEPARATELY and INDIVIDUALLY attributed to the CEO by name (or role, depending on the specific disclosure regime applicable) – rather than a single combined "total compensation" figure – giving readers genuine visibility into how much of the CEO's own pay is fixed versus performance-contingent, and how the pension commitment is separately valued.
4
Relationship to IFRS
Governance-code driven internationally, standard-driven in Germany
IFRS itself has no dedicated executive-remuneration disclosure standard of this kind – internationally, this content is typically driven by securities regulation and corporate governance codes (e.g., the UK Corporate Governance Code, or SEC proxy disclosure rules) rather than the accounting standard itself. DRS 17 is a genuinely distinctive choice by the DRSC to house this content within its OWN accounting standard framework, alongside (and reinforcing) Germany's own separate corporate governance code (DCGK) recommendations.