Shareholder Engagement: It’s All E&S, All the Time

This 52-minute Vid-Guide with Prudential’s Peggy Foran, Uber’s Keir Gumbs, PJT Camberview’s Bob McCormick and Wachtell Lipton’s Sabastian Niles is chock-full of practical guidance about shareholder engagement. At the 43:50 mark, the panel discusses how E&S and proxy season engagement are overlapping so much right now, including:

• This proxy season has been a turning point as investors want to discuss E&S issues much more than they have in the past – and historically there has not been much proxy disclosure about these topics.
• The interest in social issues in particular has dramatically risen. Investors are looking for real progress in areas that are social-related.
• Beyond the proxy, companies might consider posting what is essentially a “summary E&S report” on their corporate websites for investors to consider – since full E&S reports typically doesn’t get posted until after the proxy season ends.

Another gem in that 52-minute Vid-Guide – at the 31:17 mark – is when Prudential’s Peggy Foran talks about how you might use the proxy as a tool in your shareholder engagement arsenal, including:

• Take what you’re hearing from institutional investors – what they want to talk about – and address those topics in your proxy.
• Consider that input from investors like it’s akin to recommendations from consultants.
• Provide that disclosure in a manner that enables investors to easily consume it (if that makes sense for the company).