The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is weighing whether proxy advisers have grown so influential in corporate elections that regulators should impose rules to make their business more transparent, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The roles of Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis & Co. LLC in shareholder voting will be debated by institutional investors, brokers, business groups and unions today at a meeting hosted by the SEC. ISS and Glass Lewis dominate the market for providing recommendations for votes on topics such as executive pay, nominees for boards of directors, and corporate mergers. ISS and Glass Lewis have already agreed with the European Union’s securities regulator to follow a voluntary code of conduct to manage conflicts of interest and disclose how they make recommendations. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable have pressed the SEC to require more disclosures by proxy advisers, including conflicts of interest and their method for grading company policies such as executive pay.
