GOVERNANCE MAP

Large Mutual Fund Votes on Social and Environmental Shareholder Resolutions

The US Mutual Fund industry is the largest in the world, with $11.8 trillion in assets under management. Around 35% of this is invested in domestic stocks (see: "Investment Company Institute 2011 Factbook, 51st Edition"). U.S. Mutual fund voting data shows that, on average, the largest of the mutual fund complexes held stocks in around 70% of S&P 500 companies and around 40% of the Russell 3000 across their respective portfolios in 2011.

Since mutual funds, invested as they are across so much of the U.S. securities market, can’t do the ‘Wall Street Walk’, there seems no alternative but to invest in improved market-wide ESG risk management.

Over the eight years that mutual funds have been reporting their proxy votes there’s a discernible trend towards increasing support for social and environmental shareholder resolutions by a number of well-known mutual fund brands. In 2011 hydraulic fracturing, coal combustion waste and political spending were the most supported categories.

Calculated as the percent of votes cast for compared with all votes for, against and abstained, average support for social and environmental resolutions by 30 large fund complexes inched up from around 5% to almost 19% over the eight year period from 2004 to 2011. The average support for environmental resolutions was over 21% in 2011. The graph below shows the 8-year average support trend for 30 large US fund families.



While this certainly represents progress, some of the largest mutual fund groups vote against most or all social and environmental resolutions. Some, including the largest two, Fidelity and Vanguard, simply abstain. The graph below shows breaks the 2011 mutual fund vote down by fund complex during.



BlackRock, an Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR) member and one of the largest asset managers in the world, recently announced that it will be investing in a campaign of engagement to promote good governance at its portfolio companies (see: "Fink Leverages BlackRock’s $3.5 Trillion in Shareholder Push"). Will this commitment also include voting on social and environmental shareholder resolutions? With increasing international emphasis on institutional investor stewardship following the financial crisis as well as accumulating empirical evidence supporting the business case for sustainability what else will it take to light a spark under other large mutual fund complexes?

2012 Proxy Preview Published. What Can we Expect this Proxy Season?

This year's Proxy Preview was published by As You Sow Foundation, the Sustainable Investment Institute (Si2) and Proxy Impact today.   Authors Heidi Walsh and Michael Passoff provide a detailed picture of the upcoming proxy season, tracing trends in shareholder resolution filing, proxy voting and engagement activities.  

Some of the biggest issues that they identify for this coming season are political spending, hydraulic fracturing and coal-related risks.

The report notes that this year nearly a third of socially responsible shareholder resolutions address concerns about corporate political spending, lobbying, and the influence of corporate money on government policy.  Key contributing factors to the growing interest in corporate political influence are the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United case and the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.

Hydraulic fracturing engagement activities led by the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN) focused initially on disclosure of fracking fluid chemicals and on impacts on waste generation, water contamination and air quality.  This year engagement will draw attention to community impacts. Environmental pollutants from fracking operations are underreported by fracking companies and have a dramatic impact on the quality of life of proximate communities. Eleven fracking resolutions have been filed for the 2012 proxy season of which three have been withdrawn so far.

The report notes a possible reclassification by the EPA of coal combustion waste as hazardous as one of the key contributing factors to the increased shareholder support for coal-risk resolutions in the 2011 proxy season.  A 2011 resolution on coal risk at Ameren earned 52.7% support from shareholders.  Nine coal-related resolutions have been filed for the 2012 proxy season of which one has been withdrawn so far.

Another issue attracting strong support in 2011 following high-profile disasters in recent years is oil refinery accident risk.  Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster nuclear plant safety risk has been taken up by New York State Common Retirement Fund for the 2012 proxy season, with seven resolutions at nuclear energy companies.

The report notes a trend towards increased shareholder resolution activity on environmental issues relative to human rights-related issues over the last few years, continuing into 2012.  One possible explanation is that more companies are amenable to dialogue over human rights related issues. In addition, calls for transparency, accountability and risk management resonate with institutional investors and regulators.  Large institutional investors, including mutual funds, are increasingly recognizing climate risk and related issues as investment risks and well-crafted resolutions are articulating the business case for sustainability.

 

Mutual funds' voting on Climate Change out of step with mounting investment risk

• The year 2010 tied with 2005 for the hottest year on record, globally.
• In 2010 CO2 levels reached a record high.
• Rising waters threatened coastlines and rendered properties in some parts of the world uninsurable.
• In less than a year Australia recorded its driest ever month, June 2010, and its costliest-ever flooding, in January 2011.
• Flooding in Pakistan in 2010, the worst in 80 years, affected 14 million people.
• Russia’s heat wave, the country’s worst natural disaster ever, was linked to 56,000 deaths and wildfires threatened nuclear facilities.
• In China the worst flooding in a decade combined with deforestation set off catastrophic mudslides and caused 12 million people to leave their homes.

These events match climate change predictions based on global warming: extreme weather events will increase in both number and intensity. For investors, this is very important news.

• In 2010 (up to November) 108 climate-related lawsuits were filed in the U.S, continuing an exponential trend of year-on-year increase in climate-relate litigation activity.¹
• In January 2011, the World Economic Forum’s ‘Global Risks 2011’, Sixth Edition finds climate change to be the #1 Global Risk when ranked by a combination of likelihood and impact.²
• In January 2011 Munich Re reported that “the high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change” and accounted for US$ 130 in losses.³
• Also, the International Energy Agency recently noted that peak oil had come and gone in 2006.⁴

In a world threatened by climate change and constrained by conventional sources of energy derived from fossil fuels US mutual funds mostly voted down shareholder attempts to address climate change and fossil fuel dependence during the 2010 proxy season.

This year Ceres and Fund Votes continued their survey of the largest US mutual fund families’ voting patterns on climate resolutions. This marks the sixth annual survey, now spanning seven years. For 46 of the largest and most well-known US mutual fund brands, support for climate resolutions filed by shareholders actually dropped by 3.1 percent in 2010 compared with 2009.

The report identifies fund families that continue to outpace their peers in their support for climate resolutions, most notable amongst these are TIAA-CREF, Wells Fargo, Oppenheimer and Dimensional and three others. It also names those fund families, Vanguard, Fidelity, State Street and others, whose proxy voting on climate resolutions suggests an apathy towards, or neglect of, the investment risks posed by climate change.

For a closer look at the specific climate-related votes cast by the 46 large fund groups included in the survey, click on the corresponding fund group’s trend graph at Fund Votes website

New UNCTAD Report: Corporate Governance in the Wake of the Financial Crisis

A new UNCTAD report was published on the Internet yesterday: Corporate Governance in the Wake of the Financial Crisis. It contains commentary and analysis by leading experts from around the world, including the OECD, World Bank, ICGN, IOSCO, The Corporate Library, PRI and others. Forward by Mervyn King.

The publication constitutes a review of international corporate governance reform efforts that have been (or are being) informed or driven by international regulatory reform of the financial sector.

Chapter 1 contextualizes the main international and national reform efforts, focusing in particular on the US and Europe, while subsequent chapters draw implications for different aspects of corporate governance (shareholder rights, emerging markets, accounting issues, and a number of other topics are dealt with).

Some of the key messages highlighted in the 185 page report are:

* Reforms initially focusing on the financial sector have initiated major reviews of governance regulation applicable to both financial and non-financial corporations.

* Reforms have further advanced the international convergence of various governance practices.

* Several national corporate governance reform efforts are, for the first time, using the language of ‘sustainability’ and ‘stakeholder governance’.

Quote from UNCTAD Secretary General Supachai Panitchpakdi, from the Preface: The relationship between governance, sustainable business, and long- term strategic considerations has been on full display in the financial crisis. Today there is a renewed call for a more stakeholder- oriented ethic in the global corporate governance debate.

Quote from Mervyn King, Chairman of GRI, from the Forward: The positive outcome from the financial crisis is an appreciation that governance, strategy and sustainability have become inseparable.

You can download the full report here: www.unctad.org/cg

SRI Funds Vote as One on Exec. Pay

 Fund Votes research shows that SRI firms agree on what is to be done to improve the executive compensation. 

Almost without exception, six SRI investment firms (including Domini, Calvert, Citizens, Parnassus, MMI Praxis and Walden) voted exactly alike on shareholder resolutions addressing various aspects of executive compensation in 2008 (blue bars on graph).   By comparison, mainstream mutual funds were less unanimous in their voting (red bar graph series).

All SRI funds supported categories of resolutions such as those calling for an advisory vote on executive compensation, performance-based equity compensation, and others.  None of the SRI funds supported resolutions calling for recoupment of unearned management bonuses (at Wyeth - MMA Praxis, Motorola - Domini, Calvert and MMA Praxis, and Wal-Mart - MMA Praxis) and a limit or discontinuation of stock option awards, amongst others. 

On the one category in which there was disagreement (‘Limit Executive Compensation’), there appears nevertheless to be near-consensus at the level of the individual resolutions.  All SRI funds supported the resolutions at AT&T and IBM addressing the calculation of performance-based compensation for executive officers using projected returns on employee pension fund assets.  

Of all resolutions addressing executive compensation, there appears to have been general disagreement only on a resolution filed at Bank of America calling for a curb on CEO compensation increase beyond diluted earnings per share growth. 

Besides the Bank of America resolution, only two other votes cast by SRI funds contradicted the consensus on executive compensation . 

The overall consensus on 2008 executive compensation resolutions (of which there were 154) for the six SRI fund families studied comes out at 98%.

Strong mutual fund support for shareholder-sponsored resolutions on executive compensation in 2008

 

A new Research Brief from Fund Votes finds that 8 out of the 9 financial firms named in the US government bailout plan had been targeted by shareholder activists with a ‘say-on-pay’ resolution in 2008.   A number of major mutual fund families failed to support those initiatives and actually voted overwhelmingly against increasing oversight on executive compensation.

 

121,000 votes by 47 mainstream fund groups and six socially responsible investment (SRI) groups show mutual funds more likely to support shareholders in their quest to rein in executive compensation in 2008 compared with 2004 - the first year that votes were disclosed.  SRI funds lead the charge against runaway senior executive compensation at large US corporations. 

Other key findings:

·         Mutual fund support for shareholder-sponsored compensation resolutions is increasing, led by SRI mutual funds.  Mainstream fund groups cast an average of 41% of votes (including votes ‘for’, ‘against’, and ‘abstentions’) in support of shareholder-sponsored compensation resolutions in 2008, up from 20% in 2004.

·         Mainstream funds cast the majority of their votes in support of five of the 17 categories of shareholder sponsored compensation resolutions.   SRI funds voted overwhelmingly in support of compensation resolutions.

·         ‘Say-on-Pay’ resolutions received a majority of mainstream mutual fund votes in support in 2007 and 2008, while the number of resolutions voted on in this category soared to 79 and average general shareholder votes inched up to just below 40%.

·         The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) promoted new types of resolutions in 2008: one type requests boards not to allow tax gross-up payments to senior management, and another calls for three key principles to be incorporated into contracts with senior management.  Both categories did well in their first year, with the former earning 58 percent average support from mainstream fund groups surveyed.

·         Resolutions addressing severance pay continue to attract the highest support from mainstream fund groups: 70% average support from fund groups in 2008.  This is the only category of shareholder resolution earning an overall majority support from general shareholder bodies: 55 percent of votes cast at AGMs in the 2008 proxy season (including abstentions in the denominator) voted ‘for’ the 7 resolutions in this category.

·         Resolutions asking the board to recoup management bonuses based on erroneous financial reporting, restated financials, fraud, etc. were squarely voted down by mutual funds in 2008.  From a high of 33% of mainstream mutual fund votes in support in 2008 (averaged across fund groups), the five resolutions in this category earned a mere 2.2% average votes in support in 2008.

Fund Votes is an independent project started in 2004 by Jackie Cook.  Its primary objective is to track mutual fund proxy voting in the US and Canada. Over 12.5 million voting decisions spanning five years of mutual fund disclosures in the US and two in Canada have been indexed against shareholder resolutions and other key data.  Data drawn from Fund Votes’ proprietary mutual fund voting and shareholder resolutions databases have been used in a number of industry reports and news articles.

 

Download the report from the Fund Votes website.

Large Fund Groups Failed to Support Tighter Pay Practices at Banks named in Bailout Plan

Today the US government announced that it would inject $250 billion into the US banking system by buying large stakes in nine banks: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group, Bank of America Corp, Merrill Lynch & Co, Wells Fargo & Co, State Street Corp and Bank of New York Mellon. 

Eight of these nine banks were targeted with ‘Say-on-Pay’ resolutions in the 2008 proxy season.

Executive pay practices at large banks have been placed front and center in the financial crisis: 
• Pay practices are blamed for excessive risks taken by banks. 
• Government conditions on the bail-out plan include executive pay restrictions. 

Government conditions target severance pay and recouping incentive payouts based on ‘inaccurate’ performance measures (earnings, gains, etc.). 

Many shareholder activists argue that tighter pay practices would follow if shareholders could annually cast a vote on an advisory resolution ratify the boards’ compensation reports. 

Who voted down ‘Say on Pay’ at big banks?

Analysis of mutual fund voting data from Fund Votes’ proprietary database of investment fund proxy voting shows that sixteen of the 70 fund groups (including 1700 individual funds) surveyed by Fund Votes failed to support even a single ‘say-on-pay resolution at the eight bail-out banks targeted with this resolution in 2008.  These are:

·         ADVISORS SERIES

·         ALLIANCEBERNSTEIN

·         AMERICAN CENTURY

·         DAVIS

·         DODGE & COX

·         DWS (DWS SCUDDER)

·         FIDELITY*

·         INTEGRITY

·         PUTNAM

·         RIVERSOURCE (AXP)*

·         STATE STREET

·         STEWARD

·         VANGUARD

·         WELLS FARGO

*=Abstained on all votes

Many large fund groups and all of the socially responsible investment groups surveyed supported every such resolution at the eight bail-out banks.  These include:

·         AFSCME

·         AIM

·         AMERITAS

·         ARTISAN

·         BRIDGEWAY

·         CALVERT

·         COVENTRY

·         CREDIT SUISSE

·         DOMINI

·         DREYFUS

·         FIFTH THIRD

·         FRANKLIN TEMPLETON

·         GREEN CENTURY

·         JANUS

·         MELLON

·         MMA PRAXIS

·         NEUBERGER BERMAN

·         PARNASSUS

·         PAX

·         PIONEER

·         RUSSELL (FRANK RUSSELL)

·         SCHRODER

·         SCHWAB

·         SIERRA CLUB

·         TIAA-CREF

·         WALDEN

Data used in this study are available for download from the Fund Votes website.

Mutual Fund Voting Survey - 2004-2008

1.6 million mutual fund votes analyzed from disclosures made by 31 August 2008

40 mutual fund families profiled on 2008 votes

600,000 votes on shareholder-sponsored resolutions over 5 years broken down into categories

10.5 million US mutual fund proxy voting records analyzed over five years

Average support for management resolutions at 90%, stable over 5 years

Average support for shareholder resolutions at 36.6% in 2008, up from 31.3% in 2004

SRI mutual fund groups such as Domini, Calvert and Citizens continue to support both governance and social and environmental resolutions filed by shareholders to a far greater extent (at around 81 and 88 percent, respectively) than do mainstream mutual fund groups such as Vanguard, Fidelity, Putnam and others (at around 45 and 11.5 percent for governance and social resolutions, respectively).

Interestingly, opposition to CSR resolutions by mainstream fund groups (votes cast ‘against’ CSR shareholder resolutions) has fallen by a full 13 percent over the five year period, from 85 percent in 2004 to 72 percent in 2008. This corresponds with a large and sustained increase in abstentions by mainstream funds on CSR resolutions over the five year period from 10 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2008.

Survey available for download at Fund Votes.

2007 Mutual Fund Votes TalliedHow Activist Are Funds This Year?

In the first summary of how mutual funds voted in 2007, FundVotes.com compares 54 large funds. Funds’ votes on management- and shareholder-sponsored resolutions are tallied and funds are ranked on their ‘activism’ in these two areas.

Drawing on a database of over 7.5 million voting decisions, funds’ 2007 voting records were compared with previous years (2004, 2005 and 2006). On average, funds were slightly less likely to support management resolutions this year than last (although not compared to 2005 and 2004). However, consider this result in context:

Abstentions on management resolutions are slightly up on last year and previous years – so in actual fact, funds are not rejecting shareholder resolutions much more than last year.

Average support for shareholder resolutions is down, and abstentions on shareholder resolutions are up. Both of these results may be explained by the smaller proportion of shareholder resolutions calling for majority voting in director elections – which last year received over 50% support from mutual funds.

As in previous years, SRI funds (Domini, Calvert, Parnassus, Citizens, Coventry and MMA Praxis) were least likely to support management resolutions and most likely to support shareholder resolutions.

Shareholder Support for Climate Change Resolutions Unremarkable

Shareholder support for Global Warming shareholder resolutions has been creeping up over the past three years. In 2006 a climate change resolution achieved a record 39% support by shareholders. This was put forward by the Nathan Cummings Foundation at Standards Pacific Corporation.

A recent article by Bill Baue of SocialFunds entitiled Mutual Funds Inch Toward More Conscientious Proxy Voting on Social and Environmental Resolutions makes this case. It is based a collaborative analysis of the data that I have gathered.

However, support in this area has yet to really gather momentum amongst mainstream funds.

Average shareholder support on climate change and energy efficiency-related resolutions has increased less than four percent since 2004. No more mainstream funds supported at least one global warming issue in 2006 than did in 2004. Counting only progressive resolutions in this category, no more resolutions were presented for shareholder vote in 2006 than in previous years.

So credit is due where credit is earned. The following mainstream funds supported at least one of the progressive resolutions on Global Warming and Energy Efficiency in 2006:

• ABN AMRO
• AIM
• AMERITAS
• BRIDGEWAY
• COLUMBIA
• GARTMORE
• GOLDMAN SACHS
• JANUS
• JOHN HANCOCK/MIT
• JP MORGAN
• LEGG MASON
• LORD ABBETT
• MASSMUTUAL
• MORGAN STANLEY
• NEUBERGER BERMAN
• SALOMON
• SCHWAB
• SMITH BARNEY
• T ROWE
• TIAA-CREF
• WELLS FARGO

It almost goes without saying that this issue would be supported by SRI funds, including (for those that voted on the issue):

• CALVERT
• CITIZENS
• DOMINI
• GREEN CENTURY
• MMA PRAXIS
• PARNASSUS
• PAX

Note that I distinguish progressive resolutions in this category from those that appear to have a conservative agenda aimed at stalling progressive change in this area. In all, there were five such resolutions in 2006. These were filed on or behalf of groups such as the Free Enterprise Action Fund and called for companies to revisit the scientific evidence on climate change in order to assess whether expenditures in increasing energy efficiency were justified. These have been omitted from the analysis.

Fund families' votes on each of the 2006 Global Warming/Energy Efficiency resolutions have been detailed at the fundvotes.com website.

Director Elections Proposals Published in Proxies up to July 14, 2006

So far this proxy season 94 proposals calling for the majority vote standard to be applied to director elections have been published in proxy materials this proxy season. Thirty-one of these were voted on at meetings last year. Full details provided at: Open AGM

Director Elections Proposals Published in Proxies up to March 31, 2006

At least 49 resolutions calling for a majority vote threshold to be applied to director elections have been published in US public company proxies already this year (up to 31 March 2006).

Of these, 12 are repeat resolutions which last year earned anywhere from 30 percent support (Paccar Inc) to 58 percent support (Raytheon Co).

At this rate of publication, it is possible to predict there will be almost 100 such resolutions voted on by shareholders before the end of the year.

The list of Director Elections Majority Vote resolutions and links to respective proxies are published at: Open AGM

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Shareholders Turn their Attention on Board Elections: 2006 Proxy Season

The wave of proxy submissions that traditionally heralds the start of a new proxy season has not yet begun. Yet even at this stage at least three proxies containing proposals calling for a majority vote standard to be applied to director elections have been filed with the SEC. Predications are that this number will exceed 100.

The three are:

Analog Devices (Meeting date: March 14, 2006),
Hewlett Packard (Meeting date: March 15, 2006), and
Ciena Corp. (Meeting date: March 15, 2006)

All three of these resolutions were filed by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. None of these three companies faced this resolution last year.

Resolutions calling for a majority vote threshold in director elections showed the largest increase in levels of shareholder support from 2004 to 2005.

In 2004 13 such proposals were filed, averaging 11 percent support (counting votes for as a percent of votes for and votes against).

In 2005 60 such proposals were filed, 58 of which came to the vote, with an average support of 44%. Fourteen resolutions achieved majority shareholder support.

Analysis of funds’ voting behaviour as reported in N-PX filings showed a similar increase in support. Whereas in 2004 almost no funds supported resolutions calling for the majority vote threshold to be applied to director elections, in 2005 the 45 fund families studied supported this resolution 60 percent of the time, and many supported all such resolutions across their portfolio companies (most notably, the SRI funds).

However, this is not the only way in which shareholders are attempting to pry open the boardroom doors. So far this season two resolutions requiring cumulative voting in director elections have been published in early proxy filings by Tri-Continental Corp. (Meeting date: May 4, 2006 ) and WGL Holdings (Meeting date: March 1, 2006)

And at least two proxies published so far this season contain resolutions calling for declassification of the board: Analogic Corp (Meeting date: January 27,2006) and Span America Medical Systems (Meeting date: February 28, 2006)

In fact these three types of proposals (majority vote threshold for director elections, cumulative voting in director elections and declassification of the board) may be seen as part of a broader strategy by shareholders to achieve, in a limited way, what was lost when the SEC dropped the ball on the proposed 'Proxy Access Rule'.

This rule, initially proposed in draft form in October 2003, gave shareholders a glimmer to hope for achieving some say in board elections, albeit very limited. When the SEC failed to proceed with implementing this rule in 2004 shareholders had already started to dream of promoting board candidates who would truly represented their interests.

While majority voting in director elections gives shareholders limited power to keep certain nominees off the board, it does not allow shareholders to actually nominate their own candidates.

In 2005 proposals at Alaska Air Group and Nortel Networks called for shareholder say in proposing board candidates. In a high profile case, AFSCME filed a lawsuit against American International Group for excluding from its proxy a resolution that would have required the company to allow shareholders to nominate directors (see: Majority-Vote Director Election Shareowner Resolutions To Top 100, Dominate Proxy Season.

Perhaps this season will see more such resolutions. Perhaps companies will attempt to deter this type of shareholder action by adopting the less threatening majority vote rule, as many already have.

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New Staff Report by The Corporate Library:Analysis of Fund Voting (2004-2005)

On Tuesday this week The Corporate Library released a new report authored by this blogger.

The report presents the results of an analysis of the voting behaviour of funds as reported in their 2004 and 2005 proxy filings. It compares voting records on a number of dimensions:

• across the two years (2004 and 2005),


• across 45 fund families and two groupings of fund families: ‘mainstream’ and socially responsible investment (‘SRI’) funds, and


• across 2 main types of shareholder-sponsored resolutions: corporate governance (‘CG’) resolutions and corporate social responsibility (‘CSR’) resolutions, with a closer look at the subcategories of CG resolutions.

The key findings are that:

• SRI funds are more aggressive towards management with respect to both management and shareholder-sponsored resolutions than are mainstream funds, i.e. they are less likely to support management resolutions and more likely to support shareholder resolutions. No surprises here.
• Of the shareholder-sponsored resolutions, CG resolutions are supported to a far greater extent by both SRI and mainstream funds than are CSR resolutions.
• SRI funds show higher levels of support for both CSR and CG resolutions than do mainstream funds.
• Mainstream funds are 4-5 times more likely to support CG resolutions than CSR resolutions, whereas SRI funds were 11-18% more likely to support CG resolutions. On average, SRI funds supported CG resolutions around 75 percent of the time, whereas mainstream funds supported CG resolutions around 50 percent of the time. On average, SRI funds supported CSR resolutions 60 percent of the time, whereas mainstream funds supported CSR resolutions only 16 percent of the time.
• The most popularly supported sub-categories within the broad category of CG resolutions are poison pill rescission or voting, stock option expensing and implementation of a majority voting standard in director elections.
• Resolutions on stock option expensing and poison pill rescission or voting achieved, on average, more than 80 percent support from both mainstream and SRI funds in both reporting years. However, the number of resolutions in both categories decreased by 50 percent between 2004 and 2005 due to regulatory changes and more general changes in board practices, respectively.
• The number of resolutions requesting implementation of a majority vote standard for director elections increased by around 4 times between 2004 and 2005. Whereas no funds included in the survey had supported this resolution in 2004 where it had been voted on, SRI funds supported this resolution 100 percent of the time in 2005 and mainstream funds supported this resolution 60 percent of the time.
• Average support for CSR resolutions by both mainstream and SRI funds declined between 2004 and 2005, with SRI funds as a group showing more of a decline in support than mainstream funds (3 percent as compared to 1.5%). This surprising result has been attributed to the greater use of abstentions (as opposed to a vote for or against a particular resolution) by SRI funds, in particular, Catholic Funds and Parnassus.

The report goes on to explore the voting profiles of individual fund families in relation to some of their published proxy voting guidelines and also explores the implications of, and outlook for, shareholder activism around the majority vote standard in director elections.

Download the report.

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News Update: The SEC and Electronic Reporting

Two recent developments suggest a greater commitment by the SEC to transparency via electronic reporting.

All public companies in the US are required to file the bulk of their public reports in electronic format. The repository of these documents (known as EDGAR – Electronic Data Gathering and Reporting) is made publicly available via the SEC’s website. This repository, known as EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering and Reporting), goes back to 1996. It represents a hugely valuable resource for investors, analysts and corporations themselves and is the largest and most comprehensive such system in the world.1

1. Earlier this month SEC's new chairman, Christopher Cox, expressed his support for introducing the XBRL2 reporting format more widely: “SEC's New Chief Has a Thing for High Tech”.

Presently, the SEC only requires that ownership filings on forms 3, 4 and 5 be filed in eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format.

Since the beginning of 2005 the SEC has had in place an XBRL Voluntary Program. It is, as yet, an experiment to determine the costs and benefits of widespread adoption. Companies that wish to do so can file reports in XBRL format, based on US GAAP standards of financial reporting. A handful of companies appear to have experimented with this system in filing some 8-K and 10-Q reports. These remain unofficial, unaudited documents, supplemental to the official documents filed in HTML or text format.

2. On Tuesday the SEC announced that it was proposing a rule change that would let companies and proponents of competing solicitations post their corporate election materials on the Internet: “SEC Plan Would Let Firms Put Ballot Materials Online”.

This rule change supposedly entails reduced costs to issuers as well those mounting challenges to incumbent management. Furthermore, online availability of corporate election materials may increase the efficiency of the communications with beneficial owners via intermediaries, such as banks and brokers.

The Business Roundtable last year proposed rule changes to the current shareholder communications system, particularly with respect to companies’ access to intermediaries’ (such as brokers and banks) beneficial shareholder lists, in order to facilitate more direct communication between companies and shareholders.

This petition has been widely opposed by shareholder democracy advocates as well as smaller companies, mostly with reference to the advantage that this would give larger companies in corporate elections relative to shareholder activists, who would not have access to the same channels of communications or resources to exploit them. It is interesting to consider how the proposed rule change on electronic reporting of corporate election communications relates to these concerns.

Furthermore, the proposed provisions would not be binding – it appears that companies will be able choose whether or not to make use of this rule change. It is unlikely that they would opt-in to such a system where incumbent management fear this could weaken their position in corporate elections.

The important test of this proposal will, therefore, be whether it shifts the balance of control over the shareholder communications process (already skewed against shareholder activists) even more in favour management of public corporations.

The discussion period over the next 60 days will shed some light on the implications for shareholder democracy.

---

^{1. The Canadian counterpart of EDGAR, SEDAR (System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval)), is an electronic repository of Canadian public company reports, mostly in Portable Document Format (pdf). It is the project of the Canadian Securities Administrators.}

^{2. XBRL, which stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language, comprises a set of standards for presenting business and financial information in a XML format using a standard set of tags. This will facilitate automatic comparisons across companies, reporting periods, groups of companies, and even reporting jurisdictions using different accounting standards. XBRL International is the international non-profit consortium that has been driving this process since 1998.}

Technorati Search Tags: Christopher Cox Business Roundtable electronic reporting SEC shareholder communications shareholder democracy transparency XBRL

Board Elections and Scandal Directors

In an article entitled Teflon Directors published today at the Forbes website, Maya Roney reports on the present whereabouts of the directors who served on the boards of Enron, Global Crossing, Worldcom, Adelphia, Tyco and Waste Management during the 'scandal' periods.1

Between them, these directors still hold in excess of 120 directorships at other public listed US companies.

We know that shareholders have a difficult time challenging board nominations supported by incumbent boards. However, withheld votes in director elections indicate general levels of shareholder dissatisfaction with the status quo.

In 2003, shortly after the breaking news of corporate scandals, average votes for the 'teflon directors' listed in the article was 3% less than that of all other nominees to US public company boards. Since the average level of support for board nominees is around 95%, 3% makes quite a big difference in guaging general levels of shareholder confidence.

However, the margin has narrowed to 1.3% in 2004 and 0.5% in 2005. This suggests that shareholders become complacent or, as Roney points out, are not informed about the past failures of board nominees: "...many companies don't make it easy for shareholders to find out where their directors have been..." omiting mention of Enron, Global Crossing or WorldCom from directors' bios.

The Corporate Library maintains a database of 'problem directors', amongst which are listed many of the teflon directors. Now that the majority vote standard is taking hold, reputation may start counting for something in director elections.

1. This blogger was quoted in the article.

Technorati Search Tags: corporate governance, director elections, majority vote, shareholder democracy

Notice: International Boreal Day of Action

“Kimberly-Clark, stop turning ancient forests into tissue paper.”

November the 3rd is International Boreal Day of Action. On Thursday this week concerned citizens around the world are asking Kimberly-Clark, their governments and other corporations to stop destroying our great northern forest - the North American Boreal forest, which "stretches from Alaska in the west to the eastern provinces of Canada and is the largest tract of ancient forest left in North America. Representing 25 per cent of the world’s remaining ancient forests, the Boreal forest is a globally significant forest."

See dedicated Greenpeace website http://www.kleercut.net for more information. Check out the video. Read the report "Kimberly-Clark: Investing in Forest Destruction".

Sign up for an event in your area.

Send an email to the CEO, Thomas J. Falk, and senior executives of Kimberly Clark.

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greenpeace.org
savetheboreal.org
nrdc.org

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Funds Support Majority Vote on Director Elections

With the receding likelihood of the enactment of the 'proxy access rule', certain investor groups' strategy has been to promote the ‘majority vote’ rule with respect to director elections.

This may be seen as an alternative method of gaining some control over corporate board composition in the US. The rule requires that directors can only be elected to the corporate board if they receive a majority of votes in support of their nomination (as opposed to votes withheld).

Whereas in 2004 only around 12 such proposals were voted on at annual meetings of shareholders of US public companies, this year (2005) there appears to between 50 and 60 such proposals. Most of these have been submitted by labour groups and appear to receive higher levels of support than most of the other categories of shareholder proposals.

The voting records of 45 fund families, as published in their 2005 SEC filings, were analysed. In 2004 only two of the 29 fund families voting on shareholder resolutions addressing one of the 12 majority vote proposals supported the proposal. In 2005 34 of the 41 fund families voting on this issue at one or more of their portfolio companies supported one or more of the 50-60 such proposals.

Pressure for the adoption of this rule has also come from influential groups such as the Council for Institutional Investors (CII), and Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS).

Many companies have responded to this pressure (whether direct or indirect) by implementing the rule. Examples include Pfizer, Circuit City, Abbott Laboratories, Best Buy, Altria, United Technologies, Microsoft, Walt Disney, Prudential Financial, Aetna, Gap, Avnet, Lucent Technologies, Pitney Bowes, Lockheed Martin Office Depot and KB Homes.

It will be interesting to see how shareholders use this opportunity. It seems logical to predict greater levels of 'withhold' in future director elections - especially since investment funds are now required to disclose to the world how they vote their proxies, including how they vote on individual board candidates.

The size of the ‘withhold’ vote will become more important and the threat of a large ‘withhold’ vote will pressure boards and individual board members to be more responsive to shareholders’ other concerns.

Additionally, the threat of a large ‘withhold’ vote may pressure boards to be more sensitive to the reputation of potential board recruits before supporting their nominations.

See: Director Map for director election outcomes.

Technorati Search Tags: corporate governance, investment funds, director elections, majority vote

Fund Families ranked on Director Voting

Some funds are more likely to vote against management than others, both on management- and shareholder-sponsored resolutions.

During 2004 US Investment Companies were required for the first time to publicly disclose their voting. Also during 2004 shareholders appeared to lose the battle for access to the proxy ballot in proposing their own nominees.

So for the mean time, boards and management go on appointing their own nominees, with funds’ votes having no direct bearing on the outcome of board elections. Some funds nevertheless research and vote on director nominees as if their votes counted. We are able to identify these funds by analyzing their proxy voting records.

Ranking Criteria.

I analyzed the voting behavior of 22 fund families (including 159 individual funds, reported in 47 N-PX filings), and ranked them on how ‘Activist’ the funds appeared to be on director elections.¹

Fund Families were scored on two dimensions: (1) the extent to which they voted against board nominees (‘critical’) and (2) the extent to which they voted on individuals rather than on entire slates (‘discerning’). Based on the average scores on these two measures, funds were grouped into quadrants: Low Critical, Low Discerning; High Critical, Low Discerning; Low Critical, High Discerning; and High Critical, High Discerning.

Activist	Bordering on Activist	Complacent
Citizens	Bridgeway	Aim
Domini	Calvert	Ariel
Janus	Green Century	Dodge & Cox
Vanguard	Integrity	Dreyfus
	Putnam	Enterprise
	T Rowe	Fidelity
		Investment Co of America
		Merrill Lynch
		Scudder
		Smith Barney
		Strong
		Templeton

Activist.

I've labeled as ‘Activist’ those funds which fall into the upper right quadrant. Activist funds are more critical and more discerning than their peers: they are more likely to vote against management recommendations for board nominees and also tend to apply a more individualized approach to voting on board nominees across their portfolio of companies. According to these criteria, the following four funds are Activist: Vanguard, Janus, Domini and Citizens. Two of the four Activist funds (Domini and Citizens) are SRI funds.

Bordering on Activist.

One fund that didn’t make the ‘Activist’ category is Green Century (high critical, low discerning), which opposed 80% of board nominees at its portfolio companies. However, all of its decisions were made at board level rather than at the level of individual nominees. Likewise, Calvert voted against management nominees 40% of the time, but only 1% of the time did they make an individualized voting decision.

Other funds, while not opposing many director nominees, did oppose selected individuals spread across a number of boards. For instance, Integrity group of funds (low critical, high discerning) only opposed 9% of nominees, but these were spread across 25% of its portfolio companies’ board elections.

Complacent.

I've labeled as 'Complacent' those funds that fall into the lower left quadrant. These are funds that are both less critical and less discerning than their peers. The majority of funds analyzed fall into this category. However, Dodge & Cox and Strong deserve special mention as not opposing a single director nominee across all portfolio company board elections.

Co-Nominees of fund trustees twice as likely to crack nod.

Funds showed reticence in voting against boards to which their own trustees were being nominated. Whereas the average support for management nominees was around 82% overall, boards to which fund trustees were being nominated achieved around 91% support from respective funds.

For those funds analyzed, only in one instance did a fund vote against its own trustee. Vanguard Institutional Index Fund and Total Stock Market Fund cast votes against J. Lawrence Wilson in the September 2003 director elections at Cummins Inc., while he served as a director of The Vanguard Group.

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^{1. The data on which this analysis is based was compiled for The Corporate Library.}

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Social Screens for Director Nominees: Domini 400 Board Elections

Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) firms often support individual directors on the boards of portfolio companies, even when those same individuals are deeply implicated in the dirty and dangerous industries from which SRI recoils.

In the latest director voting disclosures it was revealed that Domini Social Investments, one of the nation's leading socially responsible investment companies, voted in support of 57 individual directors that also happen to hold board level positions in various arms manufacturing, defense contracting and nuclear energy companies.

While it is unfair to single out Domini Social Investments, since they are widely recognised as one of the leading lights in the SRI industry, the case study is intended to raise general questions concerning the application of socially responsible voting principles to director nominations.

As a socially responsible investment (SRI) company, Domini Social Investments is very careful about where it invests. Domini applies a set of inclusionary and exclusionary screening criteria to its index of 400 stocks (Domini 400 Social Index^SM).

Domini also engages in shareholder activism by sponsoring or co-sponsoring shareholder resolutions and by voting in accordance with its publicly disclosed voting guidelines for principled decision making on human rights, environment and corporate governance issues.

In board elections Domini applies a number of governance-related considerations to candidates: board attendance, board diversity, board independence, independent chairperson, independent committees, and number of other directorships.

However, board candidates are not evaluated on the same social criteria as are applied to shareholder and other management-sponsored resolutions. Domini is not alone in this regard, but this does highlight a massive gap in the SRI industry: individual accountability of board nominees.

I applied Domini’s weapons and nuclear power screens to board elections reported in Domini’s first N-PX filing (24 August 2004)¹ to identify nominees that were supported in their elections to Domini 400 socially screened company boards, but who hold leadership positions at companies in the weapons and nuclear power industries.

Sixty-nine weapons, defense and nuclear power companies were identified that would have been excluded from the Domini index based on the criteria provided at the Domini website. Some of these companies, for instance, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, FPL, Unicom and Stone & Webster are explicitly mentioned at the Domini website where the screens are explained.

Directors of these companies accounted for 103 nominations in the board elections of Domini Social Investment Fund’s portfolio companies. In 72 cases (70%), Domini Social Investment Fund voted in support of the nominee. The 72 nominations supported are accounted for by 57 individuals.

Some of these individuals are CEO-Chairpersons of the boards of the excluded companies: Marshall Larsen is CEO-Chair of Goodrich Corp, an aerospace and defense company (nominated to the board of Lowe and supported by Domini), Nicholas Chabraja is CEO-Chair of General Dynamics Corp, an aerospace and defense company (nominated to the board of Ceridian Corp. and supported by Domini), John Rowe is CEO-Chair of Exelon, a nuclear power plant owner and operator (nominated to the boards of Unemprovident, where support was withheld, Sunoco and Northern Trust Corp., where Domini supported his nomination) and Lewis Campbell is CEO-Chair of Textron, a defense supplier (nominated to the board of Dow Jones & Co, where his nomination was supported by Domini).

Chairperson of Alliant Techsystems, an aerospace and defense company, Admiral Paul Miller is also amongst those supported by Domini in his nomination to a Domini portfolio company board (Donaldson Co.). Admiral Joseph W. Prueher is on the board of Fluor Corp, a defense contractor, and was on the board of Integrated Defense Technologies, and aerospace and defense firm, until it was acquired by DRS Technologies in 2003. He was supported in his nomination to the board of Merrill Lynch & Co.

Mayo Shattuck, CEO, Chairman and President of Constellation Energy, a nuclear power plant owner and operator, is also a director of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the US membership organization and lobby group for the Nuclear Energy industry. His nomination to the board of Gap, Inc., was supported. Support for his nomination to Capital One was withheld. John Deutch, director of Raytheon since 1998, was director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency from 1995 to 1996, Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1995 and Undersecretary of Defense, Acquisition and Technology from 1993 to 1994. His nomination to the board of Cummins Inc. was supported by Domini.

This analysis is intended to raise the following questions:

If the motive for SRI is social conscience, should the champions of nuclear energy and the arms industry receive the stamp of approval from SRI shareholders concerned about these very issues and not prepared to allow their investments to flow into these operations?

If the motive for SRI is to change the way that businesses operate, would the market for corporate leadership respond if candidates for corporate leadership positions were evaluated on social principles?

If the motive for SRI is long-run returns based on strong stakeholder relations, are the captains of corporations that violate stakeholder relations the best representatives of the screened portfolio corporation in relations with stakeholders?

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^{1This covers voting, from July 2003 to June 2004, at Domini's portfolio of 400 socially screened stocks comprising the Domini Social Equity Fund.}

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Competition in the Market for Corporate Leadership?

The recent spate of corporate scandals in the US highlighted a number of corporate governance weaknesses: some institutional, some less tangible.

Closer scrutiny of individual board members, those with oversight responsibility, reveals a number of areas where conflict of interest may arise.

In the US, in 2004, 24 directors held six or more directorships at the 2000-odd large public companies covered in The Corporate Library's Board Analyst database. Thirty seven of the CEOs of these companies held three or more additional seats on large public company boards, accounting for a total of 59 memberships on compensation committees. There were more than 500 instances where two or more directors sat together on two or more of the largest US public company boards.

It has been argued that the pool of candidates for board seats is too small to avoid all compromising relationships.

A review of the regulations governing the proxy voting process, and the experiences of shareholder activists, reveals just how difficult it is to access the proxy ballot. This is particularly so for director nominations.

Institutional obstacles to shareholder nominations leave incumbents in control of the ballot. As a result, the number of nominees rarely exceeds the number of board seats. Furthermore, shareholders are only able to withhold their votes, not vote against nominees.

The apparent use of personal connections to find new nominees knits the management and directors into a tight network of individuals who serve, or have served, on both sides of the governance fence and who meet with each other frequently, and often in reciprocal roles.

Information available on individual nominees is limited to short bios provided by the nominating board. These bios may or may not contain relevant information on the nominee's past performance, such as having served on the board of a company that has failed under the cloud of a governance scandal.

If the pool of available directors is too small, the market for corporate leadership is not competitive in the areas that count: the ability to exercise scrutiny and independent oversight and the ability to balance short-term business and personal interests against long-term social, environmental and economic interests.

Technorati Search Tags: corporate governance, corporate scandal, director elections, shareholder activism