Survey: Support Grows to Curb Comp at Canadian Companies

The Shareholders Association for Research and Education (SHARE) yesterday released its 2007 Key Proxy Vote Survey, which shows growing support among investment management firms for selected shareholder proposals that address excessive executive compensation.

"Executive compensation was the big issue last year," Peter Chapman, executive director of SHARE, said in a statement. "Continuing shareholder efforts to tie executive compensation to performance and concern about "pay for failure" helped drive a number of resolutions aimed at curbing excessive pay packages for executives. Our survey showed strong support for these proposals."

Participation in SHARE's Key Proxy Vote Survey is voluntary. The 31 responding firms collectively manage a total of $553.7 billion in pension assets, of which $64.4 billion is invested in Canadian equities. The survey polled the companies on how they voted on 24 key issues that appeared on the proxy ballots of Canadian corporations during the 2007 proxy season.

A majority of investment management firms surveyed (67 percent) indicated they are given complete discretion for proxy votes by their pension fund clients. As in previous years, many pension funds still turn over their proxy votes to investment firms without providing guidance on how those votes should be exercised.