Newsletters

‘Tis the season of shareholder proposal filings, but the new year may bring additional anxieties for issuers. Proxy advisors Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis have announced in their 2013 policy changes that they are raising the bar on board responsiveness to shareholder resolutions that receive significant support. The potential impact on boards, in …

Newsletter: Proxy Advisors on Majority-Supported Shareholder Proposals (Jan. 2013) Read More »

The 2012 proxy season was a highly active one for shareholder proponents. Through August, over 1,000 shareholder proposals had been filed and nearly 500 were brought to a vote, well ahead of last year’s pace. Although two signature campaigns of the season—proxy access and audit firm rotation—were largely suppressed through company exclusions, shareholder activists more …

Newsletter: 2012 Proxy Season Review: Shareholder Resolutions (Sept. 2012) Read More »

Against the backdrop of a stagnating economy, Occupy Wall Street protests, and a presidential election, 2012 has all the makings of a highly-charged proxy season. However, corporate pre-season actions, including increased shareholder engagement, governance and compensation reforms, and no-action challenges, are softening the polemic and lightening the load of shareholder proposals.With a year of votes …

Newsletter: 2012 Proxy Season Preview (March 2012) Read More »

With a heated presidential election year underway, corporate political spending is expected to be a mainstay of 2012 shareholder campaigns. Following the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which lifted restrictions on political advocacy by corporations and unions, campaign finance has exploded, particularly through vehicles such as Super PACs and …

Newsletter: Debating Corporate Political Contributions (Jan. 2012) Read More »

With the first wave of regulations under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act underway, executive compensation and say on pay overshadowed all other issues this proxy season. The result has been a decline in shareholder proposals overall, both in terms of filings (below the 1,000 level of previous years) and the number …

Newsletter: Proxy Season Governance Proposals (Sept. 2011) Read More »

Alliance Advisors looked at a sample of 20 companies of various market cap size and industries that received a negative recommendation on the Say on Pay (SOP) proposal between January and June of 2011. This is an analysis of the factors driving the negative recommendations of Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) on SOP for the 2011 …

Newsletter: Say on Pay Part 2 (Aug. 2011) Read More »

Nearly a year has passed since the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street and Consumer Protection Act and with it the rollout of the first wave of corporate governance reforms. Among these, the most closely watched, reviewed and debated has been this year’s shareholder advisory votes on executive compensation (say on pay or SOP). With …

Newsletter: Shareholders Have Their Say on Pay, But What Exactly Are They Saying? (July 2011) Read More »

This year’s vote tallies point to two emerging trends on these proposals which may give companies a brief sigh of relief: (1) opinions of proxy advisors, particularly ISS, are having less of an impact on the vote outcomes, and (2) investors, like the corporate community, are growing weary of these resolutions.   Download Now

Initially proposed in December 2009, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act became law on July 21, 2010. It is the most comprehensive and dramatic change to federal regulation of the financial services industry since the Great Depression.The following whitepaper is a summary of the Dodd-Frank Act (Dodd-Frank) as it relates to executive …

Newsletter: Dodd-Frank Summary (Sept. 2010) Read More »