Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis have issued their voting policies for the 2015 annual meeting season.  For the most part, both proxy advisory firms’ 2015 policies are refinements of those already in place.  However, companies should carefully review their 2015 annual meeting agendas against the updated policies to anticipate possible issues.  A summary of the new policies and some issues they raise follows.  You can find the ISS policies here and the Glass Lewis policies here.

ISS

Unilateral Bylaw/Charter Amendments:  Under its current policy, ISS treats the following as “governance failures”: material failures of governance, stewardship, risk oversight or fiduciary responsibilities; failure to replace management; and “egregious” actions relating to a director’s service on another board.  In what ISS refers to as “extraordinary circumstances,” the occurrence of one or more of these failures will generally result in withhold or negative votes for individual directors, committee members or the full board.

Beginning in 2015, ISS will create a separate category of “governance failures” consisting of bylaw or charter amendments, adopted without shareholder approval, that “materially diminish shareholder rights” or that “could adversely impact shareholders.” ISS regards the creation of a separate category as little more than a codification of current policy.  As is typical, these standards leave ISS lots of wiggle room in determining voting recommendations.Continue Reading ISS and Glass Lewis publish 2015 voting policies