State Street Loosens Restrictions on Overboarded Directors

State Street Global Advisors will no longer have a numerical overboarding limit related to director time commitments and won’t use the limits to identify overcommitted directors, according to the investment firm’s much-awaited proxy voting guidelines.Instead, SSGA will vote against the chair of the nominating and governance committee at S&P 500 companies that don’t clearly disclose…

The 70 BlackRock Analysts Who Speak for Millions of Shareholders – WSJ

On one hand, the concentration of share ownership has addressed some of the issues connected to the separation of ownership and control. On the other hand, there are still intermediaries between the beneficial holders and the companies whose stock is held on their behalf. This is all the more reason for a strong, enforceable fiduciary…

Proxy Voting 2021: Report from Sidley, Insightia, Okapi

We highly recommend the new report from Sidley, Insightia, and Okapi on proxy votes in 2021. Some highlights: The 2021 proxy season was revolutionary in many respects, as investors used their voting powers to communicate their expectations to issuers on a variety of concerns. Investors exhibited renewed interest in a myriad of ESG issues, including…

Proxy Insight: Proxy Votes in 2021

Proxy Insight has published their report on proxy voting in 2021. The most significant findings: The five largest institutional investors increased their support of environmental shareholder proposals by an average 13 percentage points between the 2020 and 2021 proxy seasons, compared with four percentage points for all investors.The top five backed 100% of climate transition…

New blood at Wall Street’s old guard rattles Corporate America

This year marks a sea change as top funds throw more of their weight behind investor challenges to companies on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and put companies on notice by often choosing to publicize how and why they voted, a Reuters review of voting results and fund firms’ new disclosures shows. A record…

A Glimpse of a Future With True Shareholder Democracy – The New York Times

[L]ack of proxy voting capability leaves vast numbers of investors out of the equation, and gives corporations inordinate power. Consider that roughly half of all American households, comprising tens of millions of people, have a stake in the stock market. But most own equities indirectly through funds — mainly index funds. That leaves fund managers…

Activist Stewardship

Highlights from a new article on hedge fund activism on behalf of long-term shareholder value, from Robert Eccles (Oxford University), Aeisha Mastagni (CalSTRS), and Kirsty Jenkinson (CalSTRS): The time has come for “activist stewardship.” Simply put, this means putting the skills and techniques of activist hedge funds to work where a company’s financial performance is…

How Vanguard Looks at Shareholder Proposals

From the Veritas Compensation in Context newsletter, courtesy of John Galloway, how Vanguard evaluates shareholder proposals: We assess each proposal through a fiduciary lens. First we look for alignment with the Vanguard funds’ corporate governance principles in the company’s board composition, the board’s oversight of strategy and risk, executive compensation, and shareholder rights. We then…