February 25, 2013 Forum Report: Conference Board Resources for "Corporate Governance" Policies

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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

Conference Board Resources for "Corporate Governance" Policies

For those of you concerned with "corporate governance" policies, The Conference Board has formally initiated its "Task Force on Corporate/Investor Engagement" to develop recommendations of board responsibility for investor communications. The Task Force plan includes opportunities for public review and comment on governance issues, complementing the Shareholder Forum's focus on the functional processes of corporate responses to investor information requirements.

The following introduction to the Task Force lists the people who will be guiding the project (including two members of the Forum's "Fair Investor Access" Program Panel, Barbara Blackford as its Reporter and Peggy Foran as a Member), and also provides a very useful history of institutional investor evolution over the past fifty years as a foundation for understanding the relationships of fiduciaries:

February 21, 2013, The Conference Board: Task Force Mission Statement and Background | The Conference Board Task Force on Corporate/Investor Engagement (10 pages, 345 KB, in PDF format)

The Task Force's first public review will be conducted by its Advisory Board this Wednesday, February 27, from 1:30pm to 3:30pm ET, to "examine the current corporate/investor engagement paradigm and ...seek to identify the positive elements as well as potential areas to be addressed by the Task Force." Anyone wishing to participate, either in person in New York or online, is invited to register.

The Conference Board has also recently published two reports of definitive research relevant to the issues being addressed by the Task Force:

February 24, 2013, Matteo Tonello of The Conference Board posting in The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation: "Proxy Voting Analytics (2008-2012)"; previously referenced in January 14, 2013 Forum Report: Reports of Shareholder Voting Data and Trends

February 20, 2013 Director Compensation and Board Practices: 2013 Edition (see The Conference Board's website summary of this annual survey of public company board practices 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, and jointly conducted by The Conference Board, NASDAQ OMX, and NYSE Euronext)

Please let me know if you have any suggestions for Forum support of the Conference Board's Task Force or other corporate governance projects.

GL – February 25, 2013

Gary Lutin

Chairman, The Shareholder Forum

575 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022

Tel: 212-605-0335

Email: gl@shareholderforum.com

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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.

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