What are ISS and Glass Lewis and Why Should My Bank Care?
On June 20, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2337 (“SB 2337”), a novel regulation that will require significant disclosure obligations for proxy advisors, such as ISS and Glass Lewis, for their voting...more
On February 11, 2025, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) announced a change to its voting policy with respect to board diversity. ISS will no longer consider the gender and racial and/or ethnic diversity of U.S. company...more
Citing recent DEI developments in the U.S., ISS released its Statement on Diversity Factors in Director Elections on February 11, 2025 announcing that it will “indefinitely halt consideration of certain diversity factors in...more
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has released updates to its Canadian proxy voting guidelines for the 2025 proxy season. The ISS updates are effective for shareholder meetings occurring on or after February 1, 2025....more
Insider Trading Policies. As previously discussed in our Winter 2022-2023 Corporate Communicator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) adopted final rules in December 2022 relating to insider trading policy...more
This article is the seventh and final in our series on equity-based compensation. It will provide an overview of special considerations for publicly-traded companies when granting equity awards, including the impact of proxy...more
Last week, ISS issued a press release about the results of its latest benchmark survey (here’s the 22-page summary of the results). Nothing earth-shattering this year. We should see this year’s policy updates from ISS next...more
U.K. institutional investor bodies, including the Investment Association (IA), Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) and Glass, Lewis & Co. (Glass Lewis) recently published...more
Earlier this month, Institutional Shareholder Services ("ISS") released its annual global benchmark policy survey (the "ISS Survey"). The ISS Survey includes questions on "hot topics" in corporate governance, and its results...more
During 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted rule changes and provided public companies with useful guidance on various topics. In December, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) released its...more
Background - This alert summarizes the results from ISS’s 2021 policy surveys, which were released on October 1, 2021. As we explained in our previous alert, ISS collects information each year from institutional...more
The COVID-19 pandemic, volatile market conditions, and increasing stakeholder attention to a range of environmental and social topics made 2020 a remarkably difficult year for many public companies. 2021 will bring new...more
Glass Lewis announced updates to its United States Proxy Voting Policy Guidelines late November 2020. The 2021 Proxy Voting Policy Guidelines include a variety of changes from the 2020 version, including new provisions...more
Investors have historically overlooked social factors amid a focus on the environmental and governance counterparts as they assess the merit of an investment. This may have been due in part to the difficulty in quantifying...more
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted U.S. public companies in myriad ways. The fact that the traditional proxy season — the period from April through June when a substantial number of public companies hold their annual meetings...more
On July 22, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted amendments to its proxy rules addressing proxy voting advice provided by proxy advisory firms, such as ISS and Glass Lewis. The amendments were originally...more
The nation’s largest shareholder advisory firm, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (“ISS”), recently filed suit against the SEC over new guidelines meant to give investors more transparency into how proxy advisory firms...more
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recently released the results of its “2018 Governance Principles Survey” and previewed potential changes to it’s 2019 proxy voting policies. Among other things, given input and...more
Earlier this week, proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) launched its Annual Policy Survey, which solicits responses from institutional investors, companies, corporate directors and other market...more
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) released the results of its annual global benchmark voting policy survey on September 25, 2017. In a surprise result, the survey found that nearly 75 percent of the 131 investor...more
Comp Committees appear to have gotten the message when it comes to executive pay for performance. As discussed in this article in the WSJ, executive compensation “is increasingly linked to performance,” but investors are now...more
Snap Inc., which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on March 2nd, was the largest tech IPO since Alibaba went public in 2014. Initially priced at $17 per share, the share price jumped to more than $24 by the end of...more
The Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC) Institute and Institutional Shareholders Services (ISS) recently issued a joint study titled “Board Refreshment Trends at S&P 1500 Firms,” which analyzes demographic trends...more
Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) announced the results of its 2016-2017 policy survey on September 29, 2016, which included responses from 115 institutional investors, 270 corporate issuers and 17...more
Over the past six months, U.S. legislators have engaged in an unusual burst of energy to introduce three separate bills regulating various areas affecting U.S. public company corporate governance...more