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This guide discusses important themes from the 2024 proxy season and developing trends we are monitoring for 2025. It also includes a “housekeeping checklist” designed to assist you as you prepare your proxy statement. For...more
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recently reported on trends in corporate political activity disclosures and related shareholder proposals over the past decade, noting that “[o]ver the past decade, shareholder...more
Recently, Glass Lewis announced the release of its 2025 U.S. Benchmark Policy Guidelines and guidelines for Shareholder Proposals & ESG-Related Issues that apply across markets. Here are 8 things to know about this year’s...more
Welcome to the latest edition of Fenwick’s Securities Law Update....more
Institutional Shareholder Services ("ISS") and Glass Lewis & Co. LLC ("Glass Lewis"), the two major proxy advisory firms, recently issued their updated proxy voting guidelines for the 2023 proxy season. These policy updates...more
ESG-related shareholder proposals featured prominently in the most recent proxy season, with nearly 40% of large-cap public companies facing a shareholder vote on ESG topics in the last six months. We reviewed ESG-related...more
On January 6, Katten Capital Markets partner Farzad Damania, along with Zally Ahmadi of D.F. King, George Lu of ADEC ESG Solutions and Ari Frankel of Solebury Trout, presented a program sharing their insights into the trends...more
The enduring COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact corporate governance practices and trends in 2021, while other notable developments, including a surge in shareholder proposals, changes to the proxy rules, and increased...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
On December 2, Larry Levin and Alyse Sagalchik, partners in Katten's Capital Markets practice, along with Ernst & Young LLP and Meridian Compensation Partners (Meridian), shared updates for the 2022 proxy season as part of...more
In the past few weeks, both major proxy advisory firms, Institutional Shareholder Services ("ISS") and Glass Lewis & Co. LLC ("Glass Lewis"), have issued their updated proxy voting guidelines for the 2022 proxy season. These...more
ISS has released updates to its 2022 ISS benchmark proxy voting policies. The updated policies will generally be applied for shareholder meetings taking place on or after Feb. 1, 2022, except for those updates that are being...more
The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance recently published Legal Bulletin 14L (CF) (the “Bulletin”) providing updated guidance on excluding shareholder proposals under Rule 14a-8 under the Exchange Act. Specifically, the...more
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has released proposed updates for comment to certain of its Canadian benchmark proxy voting policies (each, a Proposed Policy) for the 2022 proxy season. The Proposed Policies are open...more
On November 3, 2021, the staff (“staff”) of the Division of Corporation Finance (“Division”) of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) published Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14L which reverses a series of...more
In the United States, the process by which shareholders submit proposals to be voted on at a company’s annual meeting has long been a mechanism used to promote often obscure special interests and social issues. In recent...more
Companies who engage with their large institutional shareholders on environmental and social issues during the 2018 proxy season should keep in mind that these investors are facing pressure from other investors on their...more