The Advisors' Blog

– Lynn Jokela

A recent report from Semler Brossy includes predictions for the 2020 proxy season along with early vote results for say-on-pay, equity plan proposals and director elections.  Here’s some of the data:

Predictions

– The firm predicts the Russell 3000 say-on-pay failure rate trend will reverse and drop below 2% and

– Say-on-pay vote support will be more varied across companies in 2020

– Russell 3000 average director election vote results will fall below 94.5%

Review of voting results so far in 2020

– 2 companies of the 147 reviewed have failed say-on-pay

– Current say-on-pay failure rate of 1.4% is the same as it was at this time last year

– 91.4% average say-on-pay vote result is 20 basis points lower than the average vote result at this time last year

– Current average say-on-pay vote result for companies receiving an ISS “against” recommendation is 38 percentage points lower than for companies that received an ISS “for” recommendation

– Current average vote support for equity proposals (91.7%) is higher than the average vote support at this time last year (84.6%)

– No equity plan proposals have received vote support below 50%

Here’s a recent Equilar blog that looks at say-on-pay vote trends over the last 5 years.  The blog also reviewed say-on-pay votes from the largest asset managers and notes that only BNY Mellon and Prudential voted in favor of say-on-pay at less than 75% of the Russell 3000.