Proxy Advisors

CII strongly supports institutional investors’ right to contract with service providers of their choice including proxy advisors. As owners of millions of shares at thousands of public companies, shareholders rely on the services provided by proxy advisors to make informed voting decisions at company shareholder meetings. According to our recent survey, most investors rely on one or more proxy advisors for research, analysis and data but ultimately make their own voting decisions.

Shareholder participation at the annual meetings of the companies whose shares they own is an integral part of the capital markets. Any impediments placed on the exercise of investors’ ownership rights, including limitations on the ability of investors to get timely, high-quality research from their chosen providers, inhibits those rights and is tantamount to a restriction on investors’ free market decision making. 

Various parties have leveled claims at proxy advisors to justify more laws and regulations, including some so onerous as to represent an existential risk to the firms. Therefore, we thought it would be instructive to explain how investors actually use them and how proxy advisors actually operate. CII’s intent is to dispel claims driving the push for more regulation by contributing the investor’s perspective to the public discussion often overcrowded with non-investor voices.

New: CII Issue Brief: Proxy Advisors and Institutional Investors: Facts and Clarifications