On November 17, 2011, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) released updates to its proxy voting guidelines. The updated policies will apply to all publicly-traded companies holding shareholder meetings on or after February 1, 2012. The key changes are described below...

ISS has updated its policies to provide a more focused review of a company’s alignment between pay and performance. The new updates emphasize long-term trends in pay versus performance and attempt to narrow a company’s peer group. The new framework is essentially comprised of the two following components.