JPMorganInvestor Services has responded to the growing focus on corporate governance by launching a global proxy voting service.
The service offers clients a web portal for agenda notifications and voting instructions, online standing instruction maintenance, online vote activity reporting, 24-hour customer service and online access to issuer-driven information.
Obligations on institutional investors to vote their proxies continues to grow. In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was recently passed and the Securities and Exchange Commission now requires mutual funds to disclose proxy votes and voting policies.
The responsible investment body is warning that a one-size-fits-all ESG framework mirroring those in the UK and the EU could do more harm than good.
Australian super funds are monitoring the US closely as President Donald Trump increasingly intervenes in corporate policy, moves that are reverberating through global markets and prompting reassessments of portfolio risk.
Industry fund HESTA has filed an appeal against an ATO decision on tax offsets from franking credits, with the Australian Retirement Trust set to file a similar claim soon.
The latest superannuation performance test results have shown improvements, but four in 10 trustee-directed products continue to exhibit “significant investment underperformance”, warns APRA.