March 13, 2014 Forum Report: Inviting Participation in Conference Board Survey of Board Practices

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Fair Investor Access

This public program was initiated in collaboration with The Conference Board Task Force on Corporate/Investor Engagement and with Thomson Reuters support of communication technologies. The Forum is providing continuing reports of the issues that concern this program's participants, as summarized in the January 5, 2015 Forum Report of Conclusions.

Forum Report: Fair Investor Access

Inviting Participation in Conference Board Survey of Board Practices

Matteo Tonello, The Conference Board’s Director of Governance Research, has asked the Shareholder Forum to invite your participation in their 2014 Board Practice Survey, being conducted by The Conference Board jointly with NASDAQ OMX and NYSE Euronext.[1]

If you have board-related responsibilities for an SEC registered company, either as a director or as a general counsel, corporate secretary, or investor relations officer, your responses to the survey will be a valuable contribution to The Conference Board’s definitive reports and benchmarking tools for board practice standards. The Conference Board will reward your participation with free copies of its CEO Succession Practices: 2014 Edition (scheduled for release in April) and your choice any two additional publications from their Publications catalogue, as well as a hard copy of the final survey report when it is released in the fall.

Click here to begin the survey.

Participants in the Forum’s programs – particularly those of you with either corporate or investor responsibilities for capital allocation decisions – will appreciate the importance of The Conference Board’s fifty year research resource as a foundation for understanding the requirements of long term enterprise value. And all of us should appreciate those of you who take the time to contribute to this research.

GL – March 13, 2014

Gary Lutin

Chairman, The Shareholder Forum

575 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022

Tel: 212-605-0335

Email: gl@shareholderforum.com

[1] Since 2011 this survey series has also been endorsed by the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance, the National Investor Relations Institute, the Shareholder Forum, and the Stanford University Rock Center for Corporate Governance. For a summary of last year’s report, see February 26, 2013, Matteo Tonello of The Conference Board posting in The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation: "The 2013 Director Compensation and Board Practices Report".

This Forum program was open, free of charge, to anyone concerned with investor interests in the development of marketplace standards for expanded access to information for securities valuation and shareholder voting decisions. As stated in the posted Conditions of Participation, the purpose of this public Forum's program was to provide decision-makers with access to information and a free exchange of views on the issues presented in the program's Forum Summary. Each participant was expected to make independent use of information obtained through the Forum, subject to the privacy rights of other participants. It is a Forum rule that participants will not be identified or quoted without their explicit permission.

This Forum program was initiated in 2012 in collaboration with The Conference Board and with Thomson Reuters support of communication technologies to address issues and objectives defined by participants in the 2010 "E-Meetings" program relevant to broad public interests in marketplace practices. The website is being maintained to provide continuing reports of the issues addressed in the program, as summarized in the January 5, 2015 Forum Report of Conclusions.

Inquiries about this Forum program and requests to be included in its distribution list may be addressed to access@shareholderforum.com.

The information provided to Forum participants is intended for their private reference, and permission has not been granted for the republishing of any copyrighted material. The material presented on this web site is the responsibility of Gary Lutin, as chairman of the Shareholder Forum.

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