With proxy season well underway, the number of companies that have failed their say-on-pay vote is up to 12—out of the 566 companies that have reported their say-on-pay votes so far, according to yesterday’s update from Towers Watson.
While the overall failure rate on say-on-pay, therefore, is 2 percent, the percentage of negative shareholder votes skyrockets in the case of a negative Institutional Shareholder Services vote recommendation. Among the 73 companies that received a “no” vote recommendation from the ISS so far, negative shareholder votes have averaged 29 percent of the votes cast, compared to just 6 percent average negative shareholder votes among the companies that received favorable ISS recommendations.
