Glass Lewis' 2018 Canada Policy Guidelines On Proxy Advice

Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC (Glass Lewis), a leading governance and proxy voting firm, has recently released its 2018 Policy Guidelines for Proxy Advice in Canada. The following are three of its key changes from the 2017 Policy Guidelines:

Board Gender Diversity

In the new year, Glass Lewis will not make voting recommendations solely on the basis of board diversity. However, starting in 2019, Glass Lewis claims that it will generally recommend voting against the nominating committee chair of a board that has no female members, or has not adopted a formal written gender diversity policy. This recommendation may extend to other nominating committee members depending on considerations such as the size of the company, industry, governance profile of the company, and/or whether the board has provided a sufficient rationale for failing to have any female board members or adopting a formal policy.