Our securities laws are supposed to be built on a foundation of full and fair disclosure. So today I came across this Reuters article (Web | PDF) on the shareholder proposals to be voted on at the May 27 ExxonMobil annual shareholder meeting.
Since I had also filed a shareholder proposal with ExxonMobil, I was curious to see what proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) had to recommend on my climate-related proposal. Reuters mentioned it in this final paragraph:
So ISS is parroting the same false and misleading story that the staff of the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected when ExxonMobil asked the SEC for permission to exclude my proposal from being considered at its annual meeting.
The problem for ISS that the proxy advisory firm apparently did no due diligence on its own (e.g., I was never interviewed) and merely parroted ExxonMobil management’s (falsely premised) recommendation to shareholders against my proposal. I don’t care that ISS opposes my proposal, but it can’t just repeat lies from ExxonMobil.
Below are ISS’ Global Voting Principles (Web | PDF). Note the transparency section. ISS parroted ExxonMobil’s lie, thereby misleading shareholders. Some due diligence (e.g., investigating the background of my proposal) would have avoided this.
I e-mailed ISS’ lawyer, ExxonMobil and the Reuters reporter about this. We’ll see what happens. Next step is the SEC.