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Inviting Proposed Methods to Support Shareholder Voting
by Owners of Capital
Two observations have become clear in the widely reported projects of
several major fund managers to allow their investors – the ultimate
owners of the capital – to determine proxy voting choices for their
corporate stock holdings:[1]
1.
The
interests and efforts of these fund managers have encouraged the
development of both effective technologies and sources of required
advisory services that can now reliably support the engagement of a
fund’s individual investors in voting decisions.
2.
Very
few of the investors in these funds care enough about how their stock
holdings are voted to bother providing their instructions.
Forum participants interested in addressing the apparently
unanticipated but not entirely surprising challenge of engaging
individual investors in decisions about the use of their capital are
encouraged to offer their views and any practical suggestions.
Although there are no plans to establish a formal Shareholder Forum
program to address this specific element of our long and continuing
attentions to “retail” engagement ,[2]
I will report views either with or without identified attribution
according to participant direction, following Forum privacy policies.
GL – October 7, 2024
Gary Lutin
Chairman, The Shareholder Forum
590 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022
Tel: 212-605-0335
Email:
gl@shareholderforum.com
[2]
For past attention of Forum participants to the engagement of
ultimate owners in the use of their capital, prior to the
recent development of interest in “pass-through” voting, see
§
July 16, 2010, E-Meetings Review,
Focus Report: “Testing the Communication Tools”
(a publication of the Forum's 2010
"E-Meetings" program,
later summarized in
September 30, 2010, Forum Report:
Standards for Fair Conduct of Shareholder Meetings Using
Electronic Communications)
§
July 11, 2012, Reuters: "Shareholder website closing,
cites complex voting rules."
§
December 20, 2012, Forum Report:
Adapting to a Consolidation of Communication Services
§
June 12, 2018, Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen, and Scott Hirst of
Harvard Law School posting in The Harvard Law School Forum
on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation: "Index
Fund Stewardship"
§
November 29, 2018, John C. Bogle, published in The Wall
Street Journal: "Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds"
§
December 26, 2018, John C. Wilcox of Morris Sodali: Comment
letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating
to its Roundtable on the Proxy Process
§
January 31, 2019, CorpGov.net: "Internet Will Drive
Public Opinion and Proxy Voting to Reflect American Values"
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