NEW YORK (AP) — Institutional Shareholder Services, a leading shareholder advisory firm, is telling shareholders to protest Sprint Corp. CEO Dan Hesse’s $49 million 2013 pay package, saying it’s excessive and not tied to performance.

Hesse got a special $18.7 million “retention” award in connection with Softbank Corp. of Japan buying 70 percent of Sprint last year. That helped put his pay package above three times the median pay for a CEO of a comparable company, ISS says.