Among the noteworthy takeaways from Meridian’s review of the recent proxy disclosures of the 200 largest companies within the S&P 500 are these governance practices:
- More than half of companies disclosed director overboarding policies and 91% included a director skills matrix.
- Board age, gender, and/or ethnic diversity disclosure and board ethnic diversity statistics are nearly universal (99% and 98%, respectively).
- Disclosure of shareholder outreach efforts (most commonly in the Corporate Governance section or the CD&A) is the norm (95%), with over half of companies having provided information on shareholder feedback or responsive actions.
- More than three-quarters of companies making shareholder outreach disclosure addressed the shareholders they engaged—most commonly based on ownership of a specific percentage of company stock.
- Nearly 90% of companies referenced their Corporate Responsibility Report and 83% disclosed internal tracking of long-term sustainability or climate change goals.
The report includes a wealth of other benchmarking data for this company group, which is deemed to be a representative sample of the S&P 500.