Tagged: ISS

ISS Updates FAQs on US Compensation Policies

ISS Updates FAQs on US Compensation Policies

ISS released its annual update of frequently asked questions on its US Compensation Policies on December 20, 2018 (preliminary updates had been released in November). The updates are effective for shareholder meetings occurring on or after February 1, 2019. There are nine new or materially updated questions, which are summarized below: #19 Will any of the quantitative pay-for-performance screens change in 2019?  No.  The screens...

ISS Provides 2019 Voting Policy Updates

ISS Provides 2019 Voting Policy Updates

ISS recently announced the 2019 updates to its proxy voting policies, which can be found here and which will be applied to annual meetings held on or after February 1, 2019. Among the various updates provided by ISS, the following policies are particularly relevant for our clients, because they expand the circumstances in which ISS may recommend votes against director candidates: Absence of Board Gender...

ISS Peer Group Submission Window Closes This Friday, for Companies with Fall/Winter Meetings

ISS Peer Group Submission Window Closes This Friday, for Companies with Fall/Winter Meetings

For U.S. and Canadian companies with annual meetings to be held between September 16, 2017, and January 31, 2018, the window for alerting Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) about changes to self-selected peer groups used for executive compensation benchmarking closes this Friday, July 21st, at 8:00 pm EDT. Information on self-selected peer groups may influence ISS as it constructs the peer groups that it uses in...

ISS Releases New and Updated FAQs on U.S. Equity Compensation Plans

ISS Releases New and Updated FAQs on U.S. Equity Compensation Plans

Last Friday, ISS released new and updated FAQS on U.S. Equity Compensation Plans, as summarized below. These FAQs provide new and updated guidance on ISS’s evaluation of equity compensation plan proposals, including treatment of performance-based awards in burn rate calculations, bundling of plan amendment proposals, updates to ISS’s Equity Plan Scorecard (EPSC) policies, and the EPSC as it applies to newly public companies. Since 2015,...

ISS Releases Executive Summary of 2017 Proxy Voting Policies

ISS Releases Executive Summary of 2017 Proxy Voting Policies

ISS has published an executive summary of 2017 updates to its benchmark proxy voting policies for the Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific regions.  The updated policies will generally be applied to shareholder meetings on or after February 1, 2017. U.S. policy changes are summarized below, and companies should keep them in mind as they consider policies on director compensation, dividend and vesting policies for stock awards,...

ISS Rebrands “QuickScore” to “QualityScore,” Adds and Updates Governance Factors

ISS Rebrands “QuickScore” to “QualityScore,” Adds and Updates Governance Factors

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) is rebranding its governance scoring solution “ISS QuickScore” to “ISS QualityScore,” though the underlying methodology appears very similar.  As in the past, covered companies can review, verify and provide feedback on the data used to determine their scores via a complimentary Data Verification tool accessed through the Governance Analytics platform.  See instructions for accessing the Data Verification tool here. Data verification...