On 26 October 2017, ISS, a leading provider of corporate governance and responsible investment solutions to the global financial community, announced the launch of its 2018 benchmark voting policy consultation. The ISS is seeking feedback on new policies or potential policy changes with respect to 13 voting policy areas. The area of most relevance to the United Kingdom is the proposal on the treatment of virtual/hybrid meetings. ISS suggests adding a new policy to the U.K./Ireland and European Voting Guidelines on virtual/hybrid shareholder meetings under which ISS will generally recommend proposals that allow for the convening of hybrid shareholder meetings and generally against those that allow for the convening of virtual-only shareholder meetings.
Comments will be taken into consideration as ISS finalizes the updates to its benchmark voting policies to be applied for shareholder meetings taking place on or after 1 February 2018. ISS expects to announce its final 2018 benchmark policy changes during the second half of November.
The closing date for feedback is 9 November 2017. The virtual/hybrid document can be found here:
A press release with links to the various regional documents can be found here:
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