Donnelley's just-released, always-eagerly-awaited latest edition of its "Guide to Effective Proxies" identifies these major proxy statement trends based on 2019 filings:
- Continued focus on CSR and ESG disclosure
- Delineation of the link between strategy and executive compensation
- Increased use of timelines to depict the company's efforts and progress, including incremental changes to corporate governance and compensation practices
- Integrating company branding consistent with the company's annual report, sustainability report, and other key documents
- Digital proxies, which many major institutional investors reportedly access
The searchable, interactive guide - designed to help companies improve their proxy statement's visual appeal, clarity, and navigability, as well as select a company-specific style and format - comes on the heels of the firm's recent release of the ESG/HCM-focused sections on a standalone basis (reported on here), and encompasses (in addition to those key topics) numerous sample disclosures on the most commonly-addressed and hot topics including board diversity, board skills matrices, board & director evaluations, director recruitment & succession, risk oversight, and CD&A, as well as the ability to access full proxies (for contextual purposes) with one easy click. Note: Among the many interesting trends, numerous companies now routinely highlight their engagement of an independent compensation consultant to support and guide the Compensation Committee as one of several compensation practices that reflect the board's commitment to good governance. Along those lines, Equilar just launched a new study to track compensation committee-retained consultants that will entitle participants to receive a complimentary report of the Fortune 1000 results (anonymized as to company participants) upon the conclusion of the study. Interested Society members may submit their compensation committee consultant information here.
This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!