A roadmap of best practices on compensation consultant independence can be drawn from responses by 18 companies to an October 2006 letter sent to compensation committee chairs at the 25 largest US companies in the S&P 500 from institutional investors representing $849.5 billion. The ten companies cited by the investors as appearing to have "best practice" policies include some companies currently being criticized for excessive compensation, including Goldman Sachs (GS) and Home Depot (HD). The six nonresponding companies so far include Hewlett Packard (HPQ), Merck (MRK), Citigroup (C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Texas Instruments (TXN), and Verizon (VZ)--Wal-Mart (WMT) has communicated to the investors with a promise to respond.