This Glass Lewis “Proxy Season Briefing” might be fascinating for those that are US-centric and not aware of how much governance practices vary significantly around the world. Market practice particularly varies when it comes to the format of the annual shareholder meeting. A surprising number of countries have annual meetings where there is almost always an in-person component. This includes the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, …
What Should Be Seen as the Potential Outcomes of Shareholder Engagement?
Engagement needs to be both a strategic process and a two-way dialogue, because the investors you’re engaging with have their own goals for your engagement with them. Does each side have certain expectations as to where the engagement ultimately will go? Maybe. Between the company and the investor, there may well be a lack of alignment on the question of “Should this engagement have a …
How Do You Engage When The “Big 3” Have Split in Half?
Now that the last of the “Big 3” institutional investors have announced that they are splitting their stewardship team into two, it’s fair to wonder how this impacts your engagement strategy and scheduling. Engagement sure has changed this year in numerous ways – in fact, Vanguard’s latest engagement survey revealed a 44% decline in the 2nd quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in …
How Analysts and Investors Use AI to Review Earnings Releases
As borne out by a recent study, analysts and investors are increasingly using AI tools to read and analyze earnings reports (10-Ks, 10-Qs, earnings releases and transcripts) to gain faster insights and identify investment opportunities. These tools leverage natural language processing, machine learning and sentiment analysis to extract, interpret and rank relevant data. Here are some of the ways that analysts and investors use AI …
EDGAR Next: How to Handle Five Issues That Might Arise
With the deadline for mandatory use of EDGAR Next around the corner – September 15th – here are the five biggest issues we’ve been working with clients on (as told to me by Cooley’s Luci Altman), some of which mirror the “Top 12 Decision Points for EDGAR Next” that we’ve blogged about before:
The SEC Offers Shiny Objects (and Data)
Last week, the SEC announced it has a new statistics and data visualization page that is pretty cool. The information is “interactive,” presented in graphics and also can be downloaded. For folks tracking deals, you’ll get this information quarterly: IPOs, follow-on offerings, corporate bond deals and Reg D offerings. You’ll get Reg A offerings on a semi-annual basis. On an annual basis, you’ll get this …
The Biggest Problem With Board Meeting Agendas? They Get Too Routine
The most common problem with board meeting agendas is they get too routine. You pull up the agenda from last year for that particular meeting and it gets a perfunctory look and it’s sent out. Most sets of governance guidelines include a recommendation that the lead director/ board chair gets a bite at the apple and reviews the board agenda. But that often is a …
How Should You Handle ‘Sunny Day/Peace Time’ Shareholder Engagement?
During the proxy season, everyone’s flat out soliciting votes, so investors are jammed up, and they’ll be available for engagement only if there’s something very specific to your annual meeting that’s important enough to them that they’ll pick up the phone. Note that I said “important enough to them.” It might be important to you – but it might not be to them. It’s always …
Flowchart: Guide to the 10-K Clawback Checkboxes
We have published a new resource – the “Guide to the 10-K Clawback Checkboxes” – to help guide you through the statutory and regulatory requirements for the Form 10-K clawback checkboxes. The Form 10-K checkboxes disclosing clawbacks have caused considerable confusion since the rules were adopted – and our easy-to-follow flowchart format should help you…
How to (Appropriately) Use AI to Take Notes
Recently, I blogged about considerations to ponder when deciding which situations are appropriate to use AI to help you take notes. I offered the reasons why it’s never appropriate to use AI to take notes at board and board committee meetings (and I also noted that corporate secretaries should bake AI into their board meeting compliance warnings). But there are plenty of situations where AI …