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If the saying “no pain, no gain” holds true, shareholders and executives of most of Calgary’s biggest companies have nowhere to go but up.

The numbers don’t lie. In this year’s Calgary Herald/Global Governance Advisors survey of Calgary’s 100 largest publicly traded companies, 90 delivered negative returns to their shareholders in 2015. And they were not the only stakeholder group to feel the pain of rock-bottom oil and gas prices.

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Thousands of workers were laid off, many downtown restaurants closed their doors and office vacancy reached unprecedented levels in this traditionally “have” city.

While 2016 has seen some rebound in the price of oil, boards of directors at these firms recognize the recovery in Alberta will be slower than in the past as they adjust to the new normal.

They must try to retain and motivate key leaders under the scrutiny of multiple stakeholder groups (shareholders, laid-off employees, proxy advisers etc.), all while understanding their compensation tool kit is now severely restricted and in need of reinvention.