Digital proxy voting technology can help companies move beyond ESG box-ticking, says Jonathan Smalley of Proxymity. The struggle for increased shareholder participation, couched within the wider movement for an enhanced form of shareholder democracy, has been one of the most significant movements in corporate governance of the twenty-first century. In a direct challenge to the board-centric notions of governance, investors have increasingly pushed for corporations to focus both on furthering the interests of all corporate stakeholders as well as those of broader society through demanding drastic reform of the ways in which their voices are heard. Historically, effective investor relations have always been defined by the symmetrical and transparent relationship between boards and their shareholders, and yet in the past decades, the outdated paper proxy voting process has often been considered a rubber-stamp exercise, with individual shareholders having no voice and institutional investors mostly taking a hands-off approach. Recent transformations driven by technological innovation are now set to completely overhaul the traditional investor communication process and replace it with a digital ecosystem that leverages real-time proxy voting to deliver true shareholder democracy for public corporations, investors and financial intermediaries. Going beyond ESG box ticking in 2023 During the 2022 […]
Click here to view original web page at www.funds-europe.com
