The Chamber of Commerce, which has already deployed millions of dollars to get the SEC to restrict the sole source of independent research on proxy issues, has now filed an amicus brief in the ISS challenge to the rules. As expected, it is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. It is particularly disingenuous in pointing to alleged conflicts of interest for proxy advisors while overlooking the far more direct and pernicious conflicts of the Chamber member CEOs.

We note for the millionth time that even if one of the three proxy advisory firms has conflicts of interest, the sophisticated financial professionals (1) voluntarily purchase these services, or not, as they choose and (2) as repeatedly documented, review the analysis and recommendations of proxy advisory firms and make their own decisions.