New Report: 2013 Proxy Season Review

New York, NY -- On Tuesday, July 23, 2013, the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy will release the final proxy season update in a series of reports and findings tracking annual shareholder proposal trends. While the number of shareholder proposals increased in 2013, proposals from this proxy season saw the lowest success rate in our database, which covers the years 2006 through 2013. This result highlights two trends from this season:

• The decreased success rate is likely attributable to the decrease in the number of proposals related to majority voting or board declassification, which tend to be the most successful.
• The decrease in the number of these types of proposals among the Fortune 250 is likely due to the fact that many of these companies have now adopted such corporate governance practices as majority voting and have declassified their boards.

Authored by Center for Legal Policy director James Copland, the finding summarizes the 2013 proxy season trends and discusses in depth the most common types of proposal: those involving political spending or lobbying. The 2013 proxy season saw a shift in the composition of these proposals. Likely due to the fact that 2013 is not an election year, the number of political spending proposals decreased this year, compared with the number of political spending proposals seen during last year's 2012 election year. However, the number of lobbying proposals increased in 2013. None of these proposals passed this season.