Proxy voting: the hallmark of active ownership

In this whitepaper we discuss how institutions can overcome the challenges with regards to proxy voting and maximize the opportunities with regards to responsible investment.

In the 1950s institutional investors owned less than 8% of US public equities by market capitalisation; this figure had grown to nearer 67% in the past decade¹. The market capitalisation of listed companies has also increased enormously, rising in the US alone from $94 billion in 1950 to more than $25 trillion at the end of January 2017².

Such concentration of company ownership among institutional investors is by no means unique to the US. It is common around much of the world. It gives a relatively small number of organisations enormous power in terms of helping to shape corporate practices and behaviour for the greater good.

In this whitepaper we discuss how proxy voting offers arguably the best challenge that institutions face in putting responsible investing principles into practice. Within this piece we highlight some of the difficulties, how they might be addressed and why we believe proxy voting represents the hallmark of active ownership.

Download our proxy voting whitepaper

¹Speech by Luis Aguilar, Commissioner, US Securities and Exchange Commission, April 19 2013.
²Seeking Alpha, January 27 2017: ‘US stock market tops $25 trillion – up $1.9 trillion since election’.

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