Directors Elected With Increased Levels of Shareholder Support Reports Broadridge and PwC

New York, N.Y., Oct. 2, 2013 - Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) and PwC’s Center for Board Governance today released their third ProxyPulse™ report covering over 4,000 shareholder meetings from January 1 through June 29, 2013. It includes the finding that directors were elected with 95% of shares voted in their favor.

“Shareholders were more supportive of management proposals this year than last year, including for pay plans and directors,” said Chuck Callan, Senior Vice President, Regulatory Affairs, Broadridge.  “Nearly 90% of companies exceeded the 70% support threshold for votes on their executive compensation plans, and over 80% of all directors received the support of 90% or more of shares voted.” 

Mary Ann Cloyd, leader of PwC’s Center for Board Governance added, “With respect to say on pay, we found differences in shareholder support at companies with favorable voting below 50 %, specifically that retail shareholders supported say on pay at higher rates than institutional shareholders.”

Retail voting participation overall continues to lag. In the 2013 proxy season, institutional shareholders voted 90% of their shares; retail shareholders voted about 30%.

Key findings of the research include the following:

• In total, institutional shareholders own 67% of street shares versus 33% for retail - reflecting an increase of about 2 percentage points in institutional ownership from 2012.
• On average, 2013 pay plans were approved with 89% of the shares voted in favor, a slight increase from 2012. Shareholders supported pay plans at rates over 90% at two-thirds of companies and nearly nine of ten companies received at least 70% support.
• About 68% of all voted retail shares were cast via the internet, 27% via paper ballot and 5% via touch tone phone. The rate of retail shares voted via the internet increased by 5% over 2012, while shares voted via hard copy decreased by 5 percentage points from last year.

ProxyPulse is a collaboration between Broadridge, the leading provider of investor communication solutions for financial services firms, mutual funds and corporate issuers globally, and PwC's Center for Board Governance. The analysis in this report is based upon Broadridge’s processing of shares held in street name, which accounts for over 80% of all shares outstanding of U.S. publicly-listed companies. The report encompasses 4,037 shareholder meetings, from January 1 to June 29, 2013, and looks at shareholder voting patterns year over year.  Visit ProxyPulse.com to access the full version of the third edition of the ProxyPulse report.