Corporate boards and institutional investors are bracing for a tide of corporate governance changes after the financial crisis. We (and others) have written reams about majority voting, the end of broker-dealer voting in director elections, say-on-pay, and shareholder proxy access. How you feel about those issues largely depends on what hat you wear in the vast corporate governance realm.
All constituencies, however, can agree on one point: Anxiety is rising that the grandest prizes of all will go not to investors or board members, but to the proxy advisory firms such as RiskMetrics, Glass Lewis, Proxy Governance, and others.
This ...