It’s clear that over the past few years, investors have tweaked their voting policies to tone down use of the term “ESG.” And it’s also clear that more and more companies are changing the title of their reports relating to...more
Just before the holidays got going, BlackRock updated their voting policies and engagement priorities. Here’s a laundry list of those updated documents...more
1/8/2025
/ Board of Directors ,
Climate Change ,
Corporate Governance ,
Diversity ,
Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) ,
Investment Management ,
Investors ,
Proxy Voting ,
Risk Management ,
Shareholders ,
Sustainability
Related to today’s webcast – “Hot Governance and Engagement Proxy Tips You Need to Know” – courtesy of Steve Pantina of Proxy Analytics, here are 2024 proxy season stats through the end of November...more
As we lurch toward the end of the year, it’s a good time to take stock of our lives. But also, it’s kind of nifty to compare where we are with shareholder proposals compared to a decade ago. This 13-page report from ISS...more
Here is our alert penned by Michael Bergmann, Brad Goldberg, Ali Murata, Luci Altman and Michael Mencher about the 2025 voting policy guideline updates from Glass Lewis. Here is an excerpt from the alert...more
As noted in this Cooley alert from Ali Murata, Megan Schilling, Michael Bergmann, and Janice Chan, ISS recently opened its peer submission window, with it closing next Friday, November 22nd. As noted in the alert...more
Continuing on with our “shareholder engagement” series of blogs, you need an organized set of engagement procedures with priorities and the ability to call on internal cross-department coordination – and director...more
I was talking to Cooley’s Beth Sasfai and Michael Mencher about the challenges many companies are facing with ambitious climate goals that no longer seem realistic. Here’s what Beth and Michael told me (also see them in this...more
Who makes the voting decision at a particular investor can vary. For the larger investors, they tend to have stewardship teams who vote and handle engagements – and that is straightforward. Sometimes stewardship teams are...more
As our world becomes increasingly digital, the importance of cybersecurity has never been more critical. From personal devices to enterprise networks, cyber threats are evolving at an alarming pace, targeting vulnerabilities...more
Last week, Cooley’s Reid Hooper attended the annual meeting of shareholder proposal stakeholders that Corp Fin hosts. Here are a few facts to help you glean some information about these meetings from Reid, who has been an...more
A lot of people are talking about the results recently posted by Vanguard from the first year of its pass-through voting pilot program. Many understandably want to read the tea leaves as indicating that “investor choice”...more
I was talking with Cooley partner Brad Goldberg about how he has been helping quite a few companies revisit their bylaws in response to the Delaware Supreme Court’s recent Kellner decision....more
Here are 10 bullets you can tell your senior management team and board based on lessons learned about shareholder proposals from this proxy season (hat tip to Proxy Analytics’ Steve Pantina for his help with these)...more