Peer group and benchmarking

Galapagos’ remuneration policy takes into account relevant benchmarks with appropriate peer companies and, for the management board members, also the group’s performance management system. For the benchmarking exercise executed in 2018, the nomination and remuneration committee worked with Willis Towers Watson as external advisor. Willis Towers Watson also provided external support for the benefit of the nomination and remuneration committee in 2020. The peer group taken into consideration consisted of publicly listed, early stage high value biotechnology companies with a comparable market capitalization in the U.S. and biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in Europe. This benchmarking exercise indicated that in the biotechnology/pharmaceutical subsector, the “transatlantic” gap is higher than in broader general industry and in the wider health sciences sector. The observed gap in market pay levels between regional peer groups was attributable to long-term incentives; in Europe, long-term incentives were materially smaller. Galapagos’ pay-mix for all executive functions was broadly in line with market practice observed within the U.S. peer group, while in comparison to the European peer group it was more leveraged toward long-term incentives. These findings were in line with and reinforced remuneration committee priorities for executive compensation. The committee found the U.S. benchmark to be more relevant than that of Europe given the majority of our competitors are based in the U.S., we have a significant number of U.S. based shareholders whose views on remuneration are based on U.S. practices, and the overall relevance of the U.S. market to the pharmaceutical industry.