ROCKVILLE, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS), a leading provider of corporate governance solutions to the global financial community, today kicked off its annual global policy formulation process by inviting institutional investors, corporate issuers, corporate directors and various other governance market constituents to participate in its 2014 proxy voting policy survey. This year, the survey has been streamlined to encourage global market participants to provide regional input on corporate governance issues that are pertinent to all capital markets worldwide.
In addition to its global survey, ISS will conduct a variety of regionally-based , topic-specific roundtables and conference calls to drill into local market best practices, which factor into the development of policy guidelines. ISS will then open a 30-day comment period for all interested market participants.
“Although aligning executive pay and company performance will continue to be important to institutional investors, we are seeing renewed focus on the Directors and Boardroom decision-making,” said Dr. Martha Carter, ISS’ Head of Global Research and Policy. “To that point, we are seeking market input on issues such as board tenure, committee chair rotation and share authorizations.”
In response to market feedback, the survey period has been lengthened to six weeks and ISS will make every effort to release its final policy updates 1-2 weeks earlier than in previous years. The high level timeline is as follows:
| July 31 | Policy Survey opens | |||
| August/September | Regional market roundtables and outreach | |||
| September 13 | Policy Survey closes | |||
| End of September | Survey results released | |||
| October | Open comment period | |||
| November | Final policy updates released | |||
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February 1 |
2014 voting policies implemented |
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The open comment period is designed to elicit objective, specific feedback from investors, corporate issuers and industry constituents on the practical implementation of proposed policies. Unless specifically requested by the submitter, feedback received during the open comment period will be made available via ISS' online Policy Gateway.
“Transparency and inclusiveness are long-time hallmarks of ISS,” said Gary Retelny, President of ISS. “The significant input we receive from all market constituents ensures that ISS’ policies reflect market best practices, create dialogue around important issues and, most importantly, serve the proxy voting needs of our institutional clients worldwide. We encourage all interested market constituents, investors and companies alike, to provide input through our survey or by writing directly to the ISS Feedback Review Board.”
To learn more about ISS’ policy formulation process, please visit: www.issgovernance.com/policy.
About ISS
ISS, founded in 1985 as Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., is the world's leading provider of proxy advisory and corporate governance solutions to financial market participants. ISS' services include objective proxy research and analysis, end-to-end proxy voting and distribution solutions, turnkey securities class-action claims management, and reliable governance data and modeling tools. More than 1,700 clients rely on ISS' expertise to help them make informed corporate governance decisions. ISS is located in financial centers worldwide and is a subsidiary of MSCI Inc., a leading provider of investment decision support tools to investors globally. For more information, please visit www.issgovernance.com.
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