Tag archives: Say on Pay

Glass Lewis’ 2017 Canada policy guidelines

By Kristine Spence on March 13, 2017 Posted in Corporate Governance

Towards the end of last year, Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC (Glass Lewis), a leading governance and proxy voting firm, released its 2017 Proxy Paper Guidelines for Canada (the Guidelines) for the upcoming 2017 proxy season. Although the Guidelines contain changes compared to the guidelines released by Glass Lewis in 2016, most were foreshadowed in the 2016 guidelines so should come as no surprise. The key changes are detailed below.

Director Overboarding

When making recommendations in relation to directors, Glass Lewis will generally recommend voting against (a) a director who is an executive of any public … Continue Reading

Updates to ISS proxy voting guidelines

By Denise Gan (Toronto) on August 9, 2016 Posted in Corporate Governance

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) is one of the leading proxy advisory firms that makes voting recommendations on public companies’ proxy resolutions. In Canada, ISS’ recommendations on transactions and governance issues can have a significant impact on many shareholders’ opinions, and particularly the opinions of institutional shareholders.

ISS publishes its proxy voting guidelines which explain the policies underlying its recommendations. For 2016, ISS updated certain items in guideline. The updates, as described below, are good indicators of investors’ views toward current issues in the corporate governance landscape.

Director Overboarding

In response to information about the average workload for directors … Continue Reading

Key takeaways from the first half of 2015

By Guy White on October 14, 2015 Posted in Securities

ISS’ preliminary postseason review for 2015 provides a report on U.S. activism trends in 2015. ISS identifies five key takeaways from the first half of 2015:

Proxy access proposals arrived in a big way this season, with almost 120 proposals and average votes in favour of 54.4% (a jump of more than 20 percentage points from 2014). A typical proposal grants shareholders who have held 3% of the company’s shares for 3 years the ability to include, in the company’s management proxy circular, nominees for up to 25 per cent of the board. As discussed in our previous posts by

Executive compensation and shareholder activism

By Leo Wang on July 20, 2015 Posted in Corporate Governance

Executive compensation has been a hot button issue as of late. Not only has executive compensation come under increased scrutiny from politicians, regulators and the public at large, it is an issue that is also top-of-mind for shareholders, analysts and proxy advisory firms. For example, the Financial Post published an article earlier this year entitled “Canadian shareholders increasingly aggressive on ‘say-on-pay’”, which reports that institutional investors and the public are taking an increasingly hard-nosed and critical approach to evaluating corporate compensation decisions.

Executive compensation can be a flashpoint between a company and its shareholders, and it is thus … Continue Reading

Trends and Predictions in Canadian Proxy Contests

By Guy White on September 22, 2014 Posted in Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance, M&A, Proxy Battles, Securities, Shareholder Activism

Kingsdale Shareholder Services has released its 2014 Proxy Season Review. In its report, Kingsdale discusses trends observed in 2014, predictions for the future, and gives its key recommendations for companies in the Canadian marketplace. In reviewing 2014 and comparing it to the previous year, Kingsdale observes:

By the numbers – the total number of proxy contests observed in 2014 remained at the elevated level seen beginning in 2008, but was down slightly from 2013. Kingsdale suggests a number of factors for the relative decline, including stronger capital markets which have helped to mask under-performers’ deficiencies, the implementation of structural