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Once-Sleeping Giants Awake

By Herbert S. Wander and Aaron J. VanGetson
April 01, 2004

Mention Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) to a board member of a publicly held corporation, particularly a corporation with significant institutional ownership, and the reaction will undoubtedly be mixed. Why? Just as the takeovers of the 1980s spurred institutional stockholders into taking a greater role in corporate governance, so too have the corporate scandals of recent years caused a stir among once-passive institutional stockholders. They increasingly use ISS recommendations to vote their stock holdings, and as a result, ISS's recommendations are garnering a fair amount of attention in corporate board rooms.

ISS Voting Policies

The ISS Corporate Governance Policy Committee annually reviews its voting policies in light of the latest trends and developments in corporate governance, and recently revised several of its proxy voting policies for the 2004 proxy season. The following is an explanation of some of the more significant ISS policy changes applicable for the 2004 proxy season. It is important, however, to read these updates in conjunction with the ISS policy guidelines that remain in effect.

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