After more than 16 months of research, Davies is releasing its
discussion paper entitled The Quality of the Shareholder Vote
in Canada. It is available at
www.shareholdervoting.com.
Davies undertook this project as a contribution to improving the
proxy voting system in Canada. As a firm, we have extensive
experience with shareholder meetings. Some of these meetings are
routine, others involve proxy battles, the approval of important
transactions or votes on governance matters such as shareholder
rights plans or stock options plans. Together with our clients, we
have encountered a variety of obstacles in making sure that votes
are cast and counted at the meeting in question. We know others
have had similar experiences. As a result, we have become concerned
with the quality of the shareholder vote in Canada.
Our original intention was to try to engage with others to identify
issues and develop solutions to the problems with the proxy voting
system. We quickly realized that the biggest obstacle to this
engagement was the lack of a common understanding of how the proxy
voting system works. The Quality of the Shareholder Vote in
Canada describes the history, mechanics and policy issues
relevant to the proxy voting system. For aspects of the system in
which we are not directly involved, we are grateful for the
assistance we have received from a number of organizations integral
to the operation of the system. We look forward to continuing to
collaborate with them.
We are releasing the paper as a discussion paper with the hope that
those with an interest in the integrity of the proxy voting system
will take the time to read it and provide us with their thoughts.
We have offered some suggestions for next steps on which we also
invite comment. Based on the further comments we receive, we will
post updated versions from time to time and will ultimately produce
a final paper.
The Executive Summary of the paper is now posted on
www.shareholdervoting.com. The full text of the paper will be
posted on October 25, 2010. We invite all comments either directly
to the authors of the paper or by sending us an email at shareholdervoting@dwpv.com.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
