Boards and senior leaders of financial institutions from around the world are struggling to decide what to do about pay this year-end, and time is running out.

Any firm that is in the business of underwriting, syndicating and/or investing in credit vehicles is witnessing times like never before.

As is true in every downturn on Wall Street there is a search for the obvious villains—those that caused firms to fold, investors to lose their money and countless innocents to lose their jobs.

This is a year like no other in the world of executive compensation. Everything has turned on its head and the challenges for professionals in the field are staggering.

For a number of reasons—government scrutiny, shareholder backlash, undernourished balance sheets—bank management and boards are hearing the call to reform executive pay.

Given the multitude of regulatory agencies that global financial institutions have to deal with, we thought it would be helpful to summarize the latest requirements as we understand them.

Given the state of the banking industry over the past two years, we felt it was time to examine if and how board of directors’ compensation plans were changing. In this flash survey, we explore changes in compensation practices of bank directors in regards to cash and equity compensation for services, chairmanships and committee work.

For many banks there is—or shortly will be—life after TARP.

In 2010, we saw a number of firms repay their TARP funds through capital raises or retained earnings. As we look to 2011, we expect both these trends to continue and the pool of TARP banks to shrink.