The reporting this week that the Trump administration is transferring to craft an government order probably limiting the ability of proxy advisory companies corresponding to ISS and Glass Lewis, together with the reported FTC investigation into whether or not these companies have violated antitrust legal guidelines, ought to be celebrated throughout the political spectrum. As longtime company governance students, we consider these strikes usually are not solely right however lengthy overdue.
For many years, far earlier than it turned widespread to take action, the primary writer has been vocally questioning the credibility of proxy advisory companies. And he’s not alone. As Jamie Dimon incisively warned in his current shareholder letter, “it is increasingly clear that proxy advisers have undue influence….many companies would argue that their information is frequently not balanced, not representative of the full view, and not accurate.”
Equally, Elon Musk blasted ISS and Glass Lewis as “corporate terrorists” after the proxy advisers tried to usurp voting energy rightfully belonging to the shareholders. No matter how you are feeling concerning the $1 trillion pay package deal that was up for shareholder approval at the moment, it was noteworthy that shareholders overwhelmingly joined Musk in repudiating the proxy advisers, displaying how ineffectual and problematic the proxy advisers might be. We’d not use the time period “terrorist,” nor would we name them “extortionist,” however we might go as far as to say that “some might say it resembles an extortion scheme!”
Listed here are among the major causes I’ve recognized and trumpeted over a long time for why the proxy advisory companies are problematic:
- Rampant conflicts of curiosity: as the primary writer wrote within the Wall Road Journal in 2003, “some of the governance ratings agencies look dodgier than the companies they watchdog,” mentioning that these similar scores companies try to hawk consulting companies to corporations whose proposals in addition they charge, creating at the least some look of pay to play. “This starts to resemble the protection schemes of bullies or the conflicts of auditors/consultants which governance gurus decry,” the primary writer wrote. “ISS directly sells advice to the institutional investors on voting their proxies while at the same time it sells advice to management on how to protect itself from these investors’ proxies.”
- Outdated guidelines strategy reflecting superstition not reality: the proxy advisory companies are staffed by inexperienced staffers missing governance expertise or experience, who work off unthinking checklists of extremely stringent requirements, despite the fact that many standards replicate superstition reasonably than reality. Such key scoring dimensions as limiting CEO/director tenure; implementing a proper retirement age, or mandating the separation of the chair/CEO have little foundation in empirical reality. If something, among the most outstanding company scandals over the previous few a long time, from Enron to Worldcom to Tyco, scored extremely on these spurious checklists – reflecting simply how ineffective they are surely in capturing good vs. dangerous governance. Satirically, generally it’s the proxy advisers themselves who’re responsible of misconduct; for instance, the influential ISS analyst who really useful HP’s disastrous merger with Compaq was later discovered to have falsified their very own credentials.
- Rampant factual errors: I’ve been vocal in repeatedly calling out cases the place the work of proxy advisory companies is so sloppy that they include fundamental factual errors – which might be sadly, massively consequential. For instance, on the peak of Disney’s heated proxy combat with Nelson Peltz, I referred to as out how one main proxy advisory agency egregiously miscalculated CEO Bob Iger’s inventory efficiency, unintentionally attributing successor Bob Chapek’s underperformance to Iger. Equally, ISS blamed Disney for not bringing a particular particular person (Mason Morfit of ValueAct) onto the board — despite the fact that that particular person has repeatedly disclaimed, publicly and privately, any curiosity in serving on the board.
The proxy advisory companies haven’t at all times been all dangerous. The real, authentic proxy advisors, corresponding to Nell Minow and Bob Monks, who co-founded ISS, and Ralph Whitworth of Relational Buyers, pioneered the proxy advisory idea within the Nineteen Eighties alongside peer shareholder rights teams corresponding to The Council of Institutional Buyers, United Shareholders Affiliation, and the Investor Accountability Analysis Heart. They have been on the forefront of a virtuous and mandatory motion in company governance, bringing accountability, transparency, and shareholder worth to the forefront whereas exposing and ending rampant company misconduct, cronyism and extra.
However over time, they themselves have been overtaken by misconduct, cronyism, and extra, particularly after the main proxy advisory companies regularly traded arms between a rotating solid of conflicted international consumers and personal fairness companies. ISS alone traded arms a minimum of eight instances within the final three a long time; one wonders how these proxy advisory companies are presupposed to be evaluating long-term worth for shareholders when their very own governance appears to be a nasty cross between musical chairs and sizzling potato.
For too lengthy, these proxy advisors have been a scourge within the company governance panorama, and the Trump administration deserves credit score from throughout the political spectrum for performing on this important problem.
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