Sector: Financials
HOPE BANCORP INC · Meeting: May 21, 2026
Directors FOR
9
Directors AGAINST
0
Say on Pay
FOR
Auditor
FOR
Election of Directors
As Chairman, President and CEO (director since 2011), Kim's tenure fully overlaps the measurement period; Hope's 3-year stock gain of 51.4% outpaces the peer group median by +7.7 percentage points — well below the 65-point gap needed to trigger a vote against — and no overboarding, attendance, or independence concerns apply.
Lead Independent Director since 2014 with deep CPA, audit, and fraud expertise; Hope's 3-year TSR outperforms the peer median by +7.7pp, far short of the 65pp trigger threshold, and no overboarding or attendance flags are present.
Director since 2016 with entrepreneurial and financial-services background; Hope's 3-year TSR clears the peer median, the TSR trigger does not fire, and no other policy flags apply.
Director since 2014 with capital-markets and portfolio-management experience; Hope's relative TSR is comfortably within the acceptable band versus the peer median, and no overboarding or attendance issues are identified.
Director since 2014 with legal, governance, and compensation expertise; the TSR trigger does not apply given Hope's +7.7pp outperformance of the peer median over three years, and all other policy screens pass.
Deputy Lead Independent Director and Audit Committee Chair since 2019, a CPA with 36 years at KPMG; Hope's 3-year TSR beats the peer median and no other policy flags are triggered.
Director since May 2024, which is within the 24-month new-director exemption window; she is exempt from the TSR trigger, and her private-equity and finance background is directly relevant to oversight of a regional bank.
New nominee with no prior board tenure at Hope; as a first-time nominee he is exempt from the TSR trigger, and his four decades of international banking and consulting experience at MUFG, PwC, BCG, and McKinsey is directly relevant to Hope's cross-border strategy.
New nominee exempt from the TSR trigger; his background as former Chief Information Officer of Global Payments and his cybersecurity expertise fills a clearly identified board need for technology oversight at a bank that has flagged cybersecurity as a key operational risk.
All nine nominees — seven incumbents and two new candidates — receive a FOR vote. Hope's 3-year total stock return of +51.4% outpaces the company-disclosed peer group median by +7.7 percentage points, comfortably below the 65-point threshold needed to trigger a vote against any long-tenured director. No overboarding, independence, attendance, or familial-relationship flags are identified for any nominee. The two new nominees, Nakajima and Sacchi, are exempt as first-time board candidates and bring internationally-focused banking and technology expertise that meaningfully strengthens the slate.
CEO
Kevin S. Kim
Total Comp
$3,785,116
Prior Support
95%%
CEO Kevin S. Kim received total compensation of $3,785,116 in 2025, which is reasonable for the head of a $1.6 billion market cap regional bank and does not appear to exceed the +20% individual CEO benchmark threshold. The pay program has meaningful performance conditions: 80% of the annual cash bonus is tied to pre-set financial targets (EPS, pre-provision revenue, loan quality, loan growth, and deposit growth), and 50% of long-term equity awards are performance stock awards (PSUs) requiring ROTCE and relative TSR goals to be met over three years — with the 2023-2025 PSU cycle forfeited entirely due to missed targets, demonstrating the plan's real teeth. The prior year Say on Pay received 95% shareholder support, reflecting broad investor satisfaction with the restructured program, and no pay-for-performance misalignment is evident given Hope's +51.4% three-year stock return and peer-beating TSR.
Auditor
Crowe LLP
Tenure
N/A
Audit Fees
$2,312,310
Non-Audit Fees
$12,600
Non-audit fees (audit-related fees of $12,600) represent less than 1% of audit fees ($2,312,310), far below the 50% threshold that would raise independence concerns. Crowe is a large national accounting firm appropriate for a $1.6 billion market cap regional bank. Auditor tenure is not disclosed in the proxy, so the tenure trigger cannot fire under policy — the absence of tenure disclosure is noted as a minor negative but does not change the vote.
The 2026 Hope Bancorp annual meeting presents three straightforward proposals: election of a refreshed nine-person director slate, ratification of Crowe LLP as auditor, and an advisory vote on executive compensation. All three proposals receive a FOR vote — the board slate is well-qualified with no TSR or governance flags, the auditor relationship is clean with negligible non-audit fees, and the compensation program is genuinely performance-linked with strong prior shareholder support.
18 companies disclosed in 2026 proxy filing
