New Report: Latest Shareholder Proposal Trends

Environmental proposals and support for them at a record high; half of all proposals in 2016 focused on a social or policy concern

NEW YORK, NY – Shareholder proposals are increasingly focused on social concerns that have almost nothing to do with increasing share value, and the 2016 proxy season was a record year for this sort of activity. The Manhattan Institute has released a new report that highlights the trends from this year’s proxy season and makes a case for the SEC to revisit some of its rules on the shareholder proposal process.

Author James R. Copland highlights recent key trends, including:

• Half of all proposals this year focused on social or policy concerns—up from 42 percent last year
• Support for environmental proposals is at a record high: five such proposals received more than 40 percent support, and a greater percentage of shareholders supported environmental-policy shareholder proposals in 2016 than in any other year in the past decade.
• Shareholder proposals other than proxy access proposals and those seeking to implement shareholder majority voting rules remain very unlikely to win majority support.

Copland also makes the case for reforms at the SEC that could reduce the burden of frivolous shareholder proposals on businesses and their shareholders, including an analysis that supports revising the rule on proposal resubmission.

Click here to read the full report.