2015 Benchmark Policy Consultation

To ensure its voting policies take into consideration the perspectives of the corporate governance community and the views of its institutional clients, ISS gathers broad input each year from institutional investors, issuers, and other market constituents through a variety of channels and mediums. Following the release in October of its 2015 policy survey results, ISS is now making available for public comment draft 2015 voting policies on select topics.

Specifically, ISS is requesting feedback from interested market constituents on new or potential changes to nine discrete voting policies, including: independent chair shareholder proposals (U.S.); former CEO cooling-off period (Canada); board independence (Portugal); board independence (Japan); factoring capital efficiency into director elections (Japan); equity plan scorecard (U.S.); share issuance limit (Singapore); advance notice provisions (Canada); and impact of Florange Act (France). Download the draft policies here.

The open comment period, which will solicit views on draft voting policies for select topics for 2015 from governance stakeholders globally, will run through 6:00 p.m. EDT on October 29. Comments will be taken into consideration as ISS formulates updates to its voting policies to be applied for shareholder meetings taking place on or after Feb 1, 2015. ISS expects to release final 2015 policies on or around November 7.

All comments received will be published as received, unless otherwise requested in the body of the e-mail submission.