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Voting Integrity: Practices For Investors And The Global Proxy Advisory Industry, Meagan Thompson-Mann

Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership

Accountability of corporate boards to shareowners rests in large part on the integrity of the system by which investors vote their proxy ballots. Shareowners rely on the vote to affect the governance of a company; corporate directors see the vote as a barometer of investor confidence in board stewardship. Outcomes determine the fate of director tenure, mergers, acquisitions, capital raising, remuneration plans and other critical decisions with sometimes profound consequences for stakeholders and the marketplace.

However, this briefing finds that the proxy voting system in the US and other markets is chronically subject to criticism that it is short on …