Canadian Investment Review – The debate surrounding how institutional investors use proxy voting is heating up.
Seeking to tighten regulations for proxy advisory firms would imply that these firms are doing something wrong, says Kevin Thomas chief executive officer of the Shareholder Association for Research and Education. He says this isn’t the case.
“There isn’t really a problem here to be solved by the SEC. We’re seeing a solution in search of a problem,” says Thomas. “There’s no evidence of wide-spread misinformation by proxy advisors or that there are factual problems in the material that they’re providing, or that there’s any problem that investors — the clients of these services— have indicated they have an issue with. So in terms of who’s being protected from what, I’m not at all clear on what the SEC thinks they’re doing.”
