"Board-Shareholder Engagement Practices" from The Conference Board reveals the results of a 2018 survey of 145 issuer corporate secretaries, GCs and IROs (see demographics page 3) conducted by The Conference Board and Rutgers Law School concerning the board's role in the shareholder engagement process.
Key takeaways include:
- Executive compensation (specifically, the types of equity-based awards) and board diversity are the two most common board-shareholder engagement topics.
- By industry, financial services companies have the highest frequency of board-shareholder engagement, as shown here:
- By size (revenue/assets), larger company boards engage more frequently than smaller companies. Just 10% of the largest revenue companies said their board did not engage with shareholders in the prior 12 months compared to 42% of the smallest revenue companies.
- Across sectors - other than the financial services sector - respondents most commonly cited a change in corporate practice (e.g., independent chair appointment, political spending disclosure) as the engagement outcome. Financial services companies most commonly identified advancement of dialogue on a particular issue as the outcome of their engagement.
- Time constraints by shareholders was the #1 factor impeding board-shareholder engagement across sectors. By company size, director time constraints/availability was identified as the chief impediment for larger companies.
To aid in comparability, all of the key findings are reported by industry (manufacturing, financial services, and nonfinancial services) and company/asset size.
Access numerous additional resources on our Shareholder Engagement and Board/Governance Practices pages. This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!