To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never in the course of U.S. corporate governance have so many board elections depended on the votes of so few.
Which few? Not shareowners, but brokers. For decades they have virtually guaranteed that directors received pumped up, Soviet-style vote totals when running for election. But all that is about to come to an end, putting corporate directors at unprecedented risk of the unthinkable: losing their seats. That’s because broker voting is about to go the way of the dodo bird. Companies and investors have just a matter of months to plan for this brave new world.
