The Rite of Spring: Preparing for the 2016 Proxy Season

Oh, how times have changed. Driven by economies of scale and the ever-growing popularity of low-cost mutual funds and index investing, large institutional investors like Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street have become dominant players in the asset management industry. Former SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar recently noted that a decade into our new century, institutional shareholders now manage over 67% of all public U.S. equities and over 73% of the outstanding equity of the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations.

As their assets under management have grown, so too has their level of involvement in their portfolio companies. Increasingly, institutional investors are seeking to shape governance practices and ensure that their representatives ' the independent directors they elect as stewards of shareholder capital ' have the tools they need to confirm that effective safeguards are in place. More than ever before, public companies are finding proxy season to be an important opportunity to engage with these governance-focused shareholders through proxy statements, investor presentations, and direct face-to-face engagement to provide them with the information they need to protect their investments.