Key Takeaways From The First Half Of 2015

ISS' preliminary postseason review for 2015 provides a report on U.S. activism trends in 2015.  ISS identifies five key takeaways from the first half of 2015:

• Proxy access proposals arrived in a big way this season, with almost 120 proposals and average votes in favour of 54.4% (a jump of more than 20 percentage points from 2014). A typical proposal grants shareholders who have held 3% of the company's shares for 3 years the ability to include, in the company's management proxy circular, nominees for up to 25 per cent of the board.  As discussed in our previous posts by Kaitlind de Jong and Trevor Zeyl, the topic of proxy access has been picked up by the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance, so we can expect to see this issue surface increasingly in Canada as well.