Investors, Companies and Corporate Governance Organizations Encouraged to Participate in ISS’ Annual Policy Development Process
ROCKVILLE, Md. (July 22, 2019) – Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS), a leading provider of corporate governance and responsible investment solutions to financial market participants, today launched its Annual Policy Survey, a key component of ISS’ annual benchmark policy development process, looking at potential policy changes globally for 2020 and beyond. Institutional investors, companies, corporate directors, and all other market constituents are invited to respond to the survey.
In a change from recent years, this year’s questions will be posed within a single survey, with a more limited number of questions, to help streamline the process for respondents. Topics this year cover a broad range of issues, including: board gender diversity, director over-boarding, and director accountability relating to climate change risk, globally; combined chairman and CEO posts and the sun-setting of multi-class capital structures in the U.S.; the discharge of directors and board responsiveness to low support for remuneration proposals in Europe; and the use of Economic Value Added (EVA) in ISS’ quantitative pay-for-performance, financial-performance-analysis secondary screen for companies in the U.S. and Canada.
The survey will close on August 9, 2019, at 5pm ET.
In addition to its annual survey, ISS conducts a variety of regionally-based, topic-specific roundtables and conference calls to gather broad input from investors, company executives, directors and others that will also factor into the update and development of ISS’ benchmark policy guidelines for 2020 and beyond. After analysis and consideration of the survey responses and the many other inputs, ISS will, as in prior years, open a public comment period for all interested market participants on the final proposed changes to our policies for next year. The open comment period is designed to elicit objective, specific feedback from investors, companies and other market constituents on the practical implementation of proposed policy updates, before the final policy changes are published later in the year.
This year’s Annual Policy Survey can be accessed here.
