Federal regulators, under mandate from a 2010 law that reshaped regulation after the financial crisis, will require companies to reveal the extent of their own pay gaps. It is said that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is scheduled to vote on Wednesday to formally adopt the rule.

It is known that CEO of companies usually makes a lot more money as compared to their median employees. But the new rule will require the companies to reveal the actual gap between the salaries.

Public reporting of the salary gap is unlikely to result in cut of the salary of executives' pay packages or boost employee salaries. But the numbers could pack a symbolic punch, though, and nudge company directors as watchdogs to push back on executives' excess, supporters of disclosure say.

According to an analysis by the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, there are some handfuls of US companies that presently disclose the ratio of CEO compensation to rank-and-file worker's pay, but they do not calculate it the way the SEC is requiring.

The vote at the public meeting is likely to split the five-member SEC along partisan lines, as it did when the rule was proposed in September 2013, it added.

Business interests such as the US Chamber of Commerce have lobbied against the requirement, saying that it will be costly and time-consuming for companies to gather the information.

Mike Ryan, vice president of corporate governance at the Business Roundtable, said, "It will impose on companies and their shareholders an extremely costly and burdensome requirement, and compel companies to disclose immaterial, if not misleading, information".