As many of America’s publicly held companies have emerged from the 2007 proxy season, we’ve seen a number of trends: proposals dealing with say-on-pay, majority voting for election of directors, shareholder proxy access, the independent board chairman, and much more. We are also witnessing the growing role of activist institutional investors and “empty voting” by hedge funds casting votes with shares they don’t actually own. It’s clear that the shareholder democracy era is in full swing.
