April 19, 2017
Golden Parachutes: Voting Trends
Here’s an excerpt from this “Proxy Insights” article (pg. 6):
Using data from Proxy Insight, it is possible to compare the policies of investors with their actual voting record. While investors typically oppose the priciple of golden parachutes, caveats in their policies often result in much higher support for the issue than might be expected. This is highlighted in Table 1, where 8 out of 10 investors supported more than half of all golden parachute resolutions they voted on, indicating that there are at least some investors paying lip service to good governance through their policies, yet taking a very different approach in practice.
This could help to explain the fact that, despite their divisive nature and tendency to provoke a fair amount of shareholder opposition, golden parachute proposals still rarely fail. Of the 438 golden parachute proposals that Proxy Insight has collected, all but 30 proved to be successful with the average level of support for these being 83%.
– Broc Romanek