A new research report by Equilar - the market leader for executive compensation benchmarking solutions - showed a decline in bonuses for chief executives while 10b5-1 stock trading plan usage is up. The study surveyed 178 companies with annual revenues of more than $1 billion, designed to represent the larger Fortune 500 firms.

The study found that CEO bonuses fied to annual performance plans fell by 18.6% while the prevalence of such payouts fell from 77.5% in 2006 to 70.4% in 2007. However, overall bonuses for chief executives grew by 1.4% over 2006 amid a rise in discretionary awards and cash payouts from annual and multi-year performance plans. The prevalence of these discretionary bonuses increased slightly.

The study also found a rise in the usage of 10b5-1 stock trading plans. The number of officers using this plan increased 5.5%, but the change actually reflects a slowdown in adoption rates. In 2007, 31.8% of Fortune 500 companies had at least one Section 16 officer using such a stock trading plan, which is up from just 28.7% the year before and 25.6% in 2005.

In the end, these results should be surprising given the poor performance of stocks. It looks like more bonuses are shifting from performance-based to discretionary while more executives are getting on plans to sell stock regularly.