Jour : 24 janvier 2013

Cet article a été publié le 22 janvier 2013 par Noam Noked, co-éditeur du blogue Harvard Law School (HLS) Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, à partir d’un document partagé par David Drake, président de Georgeson Inc; il est basé sur le sommaire exécutif de Georgeson’s 2012 Annual Corporate Governance Review. Cette recherche montre que les investisseurs institutionnels ont été sensiblement plus actifs et engagés en 2012, ce qui fait dire à l’auteur que ce fut « The Year of Engagement« . L’article synthèse du blogue du HLS fait état des changements significatifs survenus au cours de 2012 et dresse plusieurs constats qui devraient orienter l’évolution de la « conversation » entre les conseils, les directions et les investisseurs.

The Rise of Engagement in the 2012 Proxy Season

« For many years Georgeson’s Annual Corporate Governance Review has promoted the concept of engagement between public companies and their institutional investors. While Georgeson has noticed increased engagement, the nature of the engagement has generally been incremental and devoted to specific governance and compensation issues from year to year. After years of this slow, incremental growth, the 2012 proxy season became the Year of Engagement and witnessed a marked increase in company/shareholder interaction — engagement that was not limited to a few days out of the five- or six-week period between the mailing of the corporate proxy statement and the last days of a proxy solicitation campaign prior to the annual meeting.

The types of issues discussed leading up to and during the 2012 proxy season ranged from executive compensation and board structure to negotiations with proponents over the potential withdrawal of shareholder-sponsored ballot resolutions to just open-ended discussions to understand each other better. The voting statistics contained between these covers cannot fully measure that activity — although they do make it clear that the level of communication was more frequent and intense than in the past« .