Results for: Veeva
What’s ahead for this proxy season?
Alliance Advisors, a proxy solicitation and corporate advisory firm, has just posted its 2021 Proxy Season Preview, a useful introduction into the major themes of this season—well worth a read. First, and most obviously, there is COVID-19 and its direct and indirect impact. The pandemic is having a significant direct impact this year—not just in necessitating recourse to virtual-only annual meetings again this season—but also in focusing the attention of investors and proxy advisors on “how well corporate leaders navigated the crisis and protected business operations, liquidity and the health and welfare of employees.” But the pandemic has also had a somewhat surprising broader indirect impact. While it was widely anticipated that the challenges of COVID-19 would overwhelm any other concerns, the impact appears to be otherwise, as the pandemic has highlighted our increasingly precarious condition, including the effects of climate change, and intensified our social and economic inequality—all issues that are front and center this season. The Preview predicts that environmental and social proposals “are likely to see stronger levels of support in view of last year’s record 21 majority votes… and more assertive investor policies on diversity, climate change and political spending.”
In a first, a traditional corporation converts to a PBC—will it spark a trend?
For several years, we’ve witnessed a fierce debate regarding the extent to which, in making decisions, boards of traditional corporations may take into account constituencies or stakeholders other than shareholders, such as employees and the larger community, or must consider only the impact of the decision on shareholder value. In a 2014 article In the Harvard Business Law Review, then-Chief Justice Leo Strine of the Delaware Supreme Court argued forcefully that, notwithstanding the allure of “stakeholder capitalism,” current corporate accountability structures make it difficult for directors to “do the right thing.” However, he contended, there is a way to effectively shift the power balance to create incentives for good corporate citizenship: the public benefit corporation. By articulating new corporate purposes and mandates, in Strine’s view, the PBC tweaks the normal corporate accountability and incentive structure that traditionally has made corporate managers accountable to only one constituency—shareholders. (See this PubCo post.) But while there have been a few corporations willing to take the IPO plunge as PBCs, there haven’t been any that have taken the risk, as public companies, of changing to the benefit corporation form—until now that is. And what’s most intriguing is that the shareholder vote at this company in favor of becoming a PBC was overwhelming. Is there more public shareholder support for PBCs than we thought?
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