October 2017 Roundtable

Environmental and Social Responsibility

Investors Interest in Social Responsibility

• Letter from Larry Fink to CEOs Regarding Investor Engagement, BlackRock, Inc., January 2017
• Corporate Governance: Stakeholders, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, September 2017
• The Importance of Nonfinancial Performance to Investors, EY, April 2017
• How Directors Can Use Sustainability to Drive Value, Latham & Watkins LLP, April 2017
• Saving Investors from Themselves: How Stockholder Primacy Harms Everyone, B Lab, May 2017
• Companies Should Maximize Shareholder Welfare Not Market Value, Oliver D. Hart, September 2017

The Rise of Social Responsibility Proposals

• Shareholder Proposal Developments During the 2017 Proxy Season, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, July 2017
• Investor Support Heating Up for Climate Change Proposals, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, July 2017
• Breaking the Ice: Investors Warm to Climate Change, Proxy Insight, June 2017
• Shareholder Proposals: Evidence of Private Ordering Supplanting Public Policy?, Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc., June 2017
• Social Responsibility Resolutions, Scott Hirst, October 2016

Boards of Directors

Composition and Independence

• Independent Directors: New Class of 2016, EY Center for Board Matters, May 2017
• Balancing Board Experience and Expertise, Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc. July 2017
• On Long-Tenured Independent Directors, Stefano Bonini, June 2017
• Director Appointments—Is It “Who You Know”?, Ralph A. Walkling, April 2017
• Distracted Directors, Luke C.D. Stein and Hong Zhao, June 2017
• Issuers’ CEO/Chairman Structure Not Correlated with Firm Performance, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, July 2017
• Independent Directors and Controlling Shareholders, Lucian Bebchuk and Assaf Hamdani, May 2017

Monitoring and Accountability

• One Take on the Report of the Independent Directors of Wells Fargo: Vote the Bums Out, Howell E. Jackson, April 2017
• With the Benefit of Hindsight: The Wells Fargo Sales Practices Investigation Report, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, May 2017
• Do Independent Directors Curb Financial Fraud? The Evidence and Proposals for Further Reform, Cindy A. Schipani, April 2017
• “Captured Boards”: The Rise of “Super Directors” and the Case for a Board Suite, Kobi Kastiel and Yaron Nili, June 2017

Board Diversity

• NYC Pension Funds Boardroom Accountability Project Version 2.0, CamberView Partners, September 2017
• Congressional Lawmakers Push SEC Chairman to Focus on Board Diversity Disclosure, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, July 2017
• Institutional Investors Lead Push for Gender-Diverse Boards, Russell Reynolds Associates, April 2017
• Declassified Boards Are More Likely to Be Diverse, Grant Bremer, Equilar Inc., August, 2017
• Activism and Board Diversity, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, September 2017

Departures from One-Share One-Vote

The Policy Debate

• Swimming Against the Current, Proxy Insight, August 2017
• The Untenable Case for Perpetual Dual-Class Stock, Lucian Bebchuk and Kobi Kastiel, April 2017
• Dual-Class Stock and Private Ordering: A System That Works, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, May 2017

Index Eligibility

• Snap Decision: Leading Index Providers Nix Multi-Class Shares, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, August 2017
• Index Eligibility as Governance Battlefield: Why the System is Not Broken and We Can Live With Dual Class Issuers, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, July 2017
• Decreasing Patience for IPOs with Poor Shareholder Rights, Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc., June 2017

Tenure Voting

• Tenure Voting and the U.S. Public Company, David Berger and Steven Davidoff Solomon, March 2016 

Institutional Investors Stewardship

• Investment Stewardship 2017 Annual Report, Vanguard, September 2017
• The Investor Stewardship Group: An Inflection Point in U.S. Corporate Governance?, John C. Wilcox, March 2017
• Proxy Voting Conflicts—Asset Manager Conflicts of Interest in the Energy and Utility Industries, The 50/50 Climate Project, May 2017
• The Increasing Evidence that Horizontal Shareholding Is Distorting Our Economy, Einer Elhauge, June 2017
• Defusing the Antitrust Threat to Institutional Investor Involvement in Corporate Governance, Edward B. Rock & Daniel L. Rubinfeld, March 2017
• Do Exogenous Changes in Passive Institutional Ownership Affect Corporate Governance and Firm Value? Rüdiger Fahlenbrach, and Cornelius Schmidt, May 2017

Executive Compensation

Pay levels, Pay for Performance and Say on Pay Votes

• Is Executive Pay Broken?, EY, April 2017
• The 200 Highest-Paid CEOs in 2016, Equilar, Inc., June 2017
• Say-on-Pay: Is Anybody Listening?, Dan Palmon, August 2017
• SEC’s Latest Guidance on Pay Ratio Rule, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, September 2017
• S&P 500 CEO Compensation Increase Trends, Pay Governance LLC, October 2017
• Executive Compensation: A Survey of Theory and Evidence, Alex Edmans, Xavier Gabaix & Dirk Jenter, September 2017

Mandatory Arbitration and Forum Selection Bylaws

Mandatory Arbitration

• You Want Mandatory Arbitration in your Charter? Hey, Just Ask!, Cooley LLP, August 2017
• Delaware’s Fall: The Arbitration Bylaws Scenario, Lynn M. LoPucki, May 2017
• Shareholders Deserve Right to Choose Mandatory Arbitration, Hal Scott, August 2017

Forum Selection Bylaws

• Forum-Selection Bylaws—Another Attack Rebuffed, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, December 2016
• Forum-Selection Provisions in Corporate “Contracts”, Helen Hershkoff and Marcel Kahan, September 2017