E-Proxy… future BFF of shareholder activists
Jeffrey N. Gordon has released a draft of his forthcoming paper titled Proxy Access in an Era of Increasing Shareholder Power: Forget Issuer Proxy Access and Focus on E-Proxy.
A bit dry reading for one sitting, but his abstract, as published at The Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog, provides salient points:
The current debate over shareholder access to the issuer’s proxy for the purpose of making director nomination is both overstated in its importance and misses the serious issue in question. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s new e-proxy rules, which permit reliance on proxy materials posted on a website, should substantially reduce the production and distribution cost differences between a meaningful contest waged via issuer proxy access and a freestanding proxy solicitation… Institutional investors and other shareholder activists should focus their energies on working through the mechanics of waging short-slate proxy contests using e-proxy solicitations.
