ProxyPulse™ provides data and analysis on voting trends as the proxy season progresses. This first edition for the 2013 season covers the 549 annual meetings held between January 1, and April 23, 2013 and subsequent editions will incorporate May and June meetings. These reports are part of an ongoing commitment to provide valuable benchmarking data to the industry.

The analysis is based upon Broadridge’s processing of shares held in street name, which accounts for over 80% of all shares outstanding of U.S. publicly-listed companies. For purposes of this report, the term “institutional shareholders” refers to mutual funds, public and private pension funds, hedge funds, investment managers, managed accounts and voting by vote agents. The term “retail shareholders” refers to individuals whose shares are held beneficially in brokerage accounts.

…continue reading: How Well Do You Know Your Shareholders?

The 2013 proxy season marks the third year of Advisory Vote on Executive Compensation proposals (Management Say on Pay (MSOP)) as required under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. In 2011, 36 U.S. corporations failed to receive majority shareholder support for their MSOP proposal and in 2012 that number increased to 59. Based on the YTD results for 2013, it seems that there could be fewer MSOP failures this year compared to 2012. In this report, we present some interesting facts relating to the 20 failed MSOP votes for annual meetings through May 17. [1]

…continue reading: Facts Behind 2013 Failed Say on Pay Votes

1. Shareholder activism is growing at an increasing rate. No company is too big to become the target of an activist, and even companies with sterling corporate governance practices and positive share price performance, including outperformance of peers, may be targeted.

2. “Activist Hedge Fund” has become an asset class in which institutional investors are making substantial investments. In addition, even where institutional investors are not themselves limited partners in the activist hedge fund, several now maintain open and regular lines of communication with activists, including sharing potential “hit lists” of possible targets.

3. Major investment banks, law firms, proxy solicitors, and public relations advisors are representing activists.

…continue reading: Lessons from the 2013 Proxy Season

In an important and thoughtful decision that will influence the structure of future going-private transactions by controlling stockholders, Chancellor Strine of the Delaware Court of Chancery applied the business judgment rule—instead of the more onerous entire fairness review—to a going-private merger by a controlling stockholder because the merger was structured to adequately protect minority stockholders. The decision is likely to be appealed, but if affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court on appeal, the case should provide certainty in an area of the law that has been a source of debate and uncertainty for two decades. The decision, In re MFW Shareholders Litigation, provides a detailed roadmap to obtaining the more favorable business judgment rule review and reducing the considerable litigation costs and risks associated with entire fairness review.

The court in MFW held that if the transaction is (1) negotiated by a fully-empowered special committee of directors who are independent of the controlling stockholder and (2) conditioned on the approval of a majority of the minority stockholders, then entire fairness review will not apply. The court noted the following key elements of the process:

…continue reading: Delaware Court Decision on Entire Fairness Review for Mergers

After the horrifying collapse of a factory in Bangladesh killed over 1,100 workers, companies like H&M are moving to strengthen supplier standards and audits, as they should. We have seen similar responses to other compliance meltdowns in the past. Banks trumpet new checks and balances to help prevent excessive risk taking, massive trading losses and robo-foreclosures. Walmart points to changes in its compliance policies in response to front-page allegations of bribery and corruption in Mexico. Companies are quite happy to tell investors, employees, and the public how such changes will prevent the same problems from recurring.

This public disclosure about change for the future is commendable. But such reforms must be accompanied by measures to hold executives accountable for major compliance failures in the past. And here, beyond the occasional news report that a CEO volunteered to forego a bonus, companies tell us very little.

…continue reading: Demanding Transparency in Clawbacks

Golden leashes – compensation arrangements between activists and their nominees to target boards – have emerged as the latest advance (or atrocity, depending on your point of view) in the long running battle between activists and defenders of the long-term investor faith. Just exactly what are we worried about?

With average holding periods for U.S. equity investors having shriveled from five years in the 1980s to nine months or less today, the defenders of “long-termism” would seem to have lost the war, though perhaps not the argument. After all, if the average shareholder is only sticking around for nine months, and if directors owe their duties to their shareholders (average or otherwise), then at best a director on average will have nine months to maximize the value of those shares. Starting now. Or maybe starting nine months ago.

But this assumes that the directors of any particular company have a real idea of just how long their particular set of “average” shareholders will stick around, and it also assumes that the directors owe duties primarily to their average shareholders, and not to their Warren Buffett investors (on one hand) or their high speed traders (on the other). So, in the absence of any real information about how long any then-current set of shareholders will invest for on average, and in the absence of any rational analytical framework to decide which subset(s) of shareholders they should be acting for, what is a director to do?

Here is what I think directors do, in one form or fashion or another:

…continue reading: Incentive Schemes for Nominees of Activist Investors

I am delighted to be able to participate in this conference, and especially proud as an Irish-American that it is being held in conjunction with Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union. This conference is particularly valuable because it provides a forum for executives, directors, investors, and policy makers to have a frank and productive dialogue on important corporate governance issues.

I would like to talk about the increasing role that governments – particularly, in the United States, the federal government – play in corporate governance as well as the increasingly prominent influence of proxy advisory firms on how companies are governed and on how shareholders vote. These changes have led to, among other things, new limitations and requirements being imposed on boards of directors and companies. And while the resulting costs to investors are easily apparent, the purported benefits are harder to discern. Although today I will for the most part discuss these issues as they apply to U.S. companies, I note that there is a related trend in Europe. As such, I hope that my comments may help inform your approach to regulating corporate governance as well.

…continue reading: The Role of Governments and Proxy Advisory Firms in Corporate Governance

Achieving optimal board composition and succession planning requires an articulated and clearly communicated enterprise strategy. The ideal mix of director skills and experience depends on a number of company-specific factors. This report provides a matrix that nominating committees and boards can use to help define their needs and to provoke discussion about how to improve company-specific corporate governance.

How do you build the best board for your organization? What attributes and skills are required by law and what mix of experiences and talents will give you the best corporate governance? What commonly required director attributes are a must for each board and how do you customize and fine-tune your search to achieve a high-performing board? Optimal board composition—that is, achieving the best mix of director skills and experience—depends on many company-specific variables. Some of the most important of these include, but are not limited to: (1) stage of company development, (2) the extent to which international markets are mission critical to the company’s future (in which case nominees should have a detailed understanding of target culture, markets and business risk); (3) unique technology dependence; and (4) the need for access to financial and capital markets.

…continue reading: Corporate Director Selection and Recruitment: A Matrix

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that a claim alleging a false statement of opinion or belief in a registration statement may proceed under Section 11 of the Securities Act notwithstanding the absence of allegations showing that the defendants did not actually hold the opinion or believe the statement. Indiana State District Council of Laborers & Hod Carriers Pension & Welfare Fund v. Omnicare, Inc., (6th Cir. May 23, 2013). The Sixth Circuit’s decision conflicts with decisions of the Second and Ninth Circuits holding that liability under Section 11 for a statement of belief or opinion would exist only if the statement was both objectively and subjectively false or misleading. See Fait v. Regions Financial Corp., 655 F.3d 105 (2d Cir. 2011); Rubke v. Capital Bancorp Ltd., 551 F.3d 1156 (9th Cir. 2009). Under that standard, a Section 11 complaint that fails to plausibly allege that a defendant did not actually believe the false statement or hold the opinion would be dismissed.

…continue reading: The Circuits Split on Securities Act Pleading Standards

Directors receive a continuous stream of information and try to be vigilant in order to discern from the mix of background and foreground company data those dissonant notes, those underappreciated inputs, those gaps in analysis. They listen to identify the things that don’t add up.

But it’s getting harder to detect those subtle yet critical notes buried in the morass of reading material now available to directors. Only a few years ago, the volume of pre-meeting materials was limited to the width of a three-ring binder and the size of a standard FedEx box, which typically arrived at the director’s office or home a few days before the meeting. As I’ve pointed out in this Handbook, the director most up-to-speed on these “pre-reading” materials was often the director who made the longest plane trip to attend the meeting. Those directors, poring through their binders stuffed with pre-reading materials, were a common sight in the first-class sections of commercial airliners. The binder was a bulky carry-on, but at least its size limited the volume of pre-reading. Not so anymore.

Today, services like BoardLink permit companies to transmit vast amounts of information to dedicated devices supplied by boards to their directors. There is a consequent proliferation of PowerPoints, appendices, memos, advisories, agendas, draft minutes, and so on. There is also a potential collapse in timing, because content can be added or revised and resent without FedEx deadlines. The result: significantly more pre-reading, less time.

Directors need the board to put reasonable limits and priorities on this phenomenon. It is true that so long as directors make well-informed decisions without conflict of interest, they should not be held liable for business judgments that do not lead to successful outcomes, and under Delaware law can be exonerated from personal liability by company charter so long as they meet that standard of conduct. However, having more data does not necessarily mean that directors are better informed.

…continue reading: From Vigilance to Vision