For Levin, the pilot helps take pressure off BlackRock from voting, given all the pressure happening to them publicly. It is also a way, he believes, for BlackRock to get ahead of any formal legislation that may require funds to offer pass-through voting in the future. “Te last thing they want is the SEC trying to supervise how they handle this; it helps them manage optics,” he says.
Cost Effective and Technology Inspired Whether there are ulterior motives for launching this pilot is neither here nor there. “Te lead line,” Greene notes, “is that the pilot is another step toward democratizing the voting process.” It is also, as Coates explains, making the process much more cost-effective, due largely to technological advancements. Danielle Gurrieri, Vice President, Head of Bank, Broker Dealer and Digital Center of Excellence Product Management at Broa- dridge, also showed great enthusiasm for the pilot, in part due to Broadridge’s own participation in the effort. “We are thrilled,” Gurrieri says, “to have been part of the democratization of voting for the underlying equities that make up these funds.” Broadridge enabled the technology needed to connect all the stakeholders in the process—the funds, the end investors, the brokers, and of course the issuers. Te demographics of today’s retail investors also plays a role.
Watson, who has studied retail shareholder demographics in depth since her time as investor relations for Microsoft, explains, “Te next generation of investors is more tech savvy. Tey are not necessarily going to open something in an envelope, but they are passionate and will look at proxy voting differently.” With new technologies in place that make Voting Choice pos- sible for funds and their investors, IROs should regularly assess the extent of such fund holdings in their company, and the extent to which voting power will be distributed to a broader range of inves- tors with whom the corporate issuer has no relationship. Paul Conn, President of Global Capital Markets, Computershare, stresses the fact that corporate issuers and fund investors are not directly connected today, rendering some traditional communications ineffective. Conn notes that even if an issuer and their investor relations
team identify which of their retail holders own the IVV fund, there would need to be consent between the fund complex and the is- suer, as well as the fund and the fund investor, to allow the issuer to communicate directly with these ultimate economic owners. Conn and his team at Computershare are analyzing the need for digital communication programs that would help issuers find ways to connect more effectively to these otherwise disconnected fundholders through online tools, social media, and other forms of digital communication.
30 SPRING 2 0 24 ■ IR UPDAT E
niri.org/ irupdate
"Today’s retail shareholders are open to more information, but you need to be where the retail shareholders are. Interact with these shareholders on the platforms they frequent. BlackRock’s pilot could be the turning point to encourage issuers to embark upon year-round proxy engagement."
- Agnies Watson, Co-founder, Stockperks
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
