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Security, Confidentiality Concerns Need To Be Addressed In Virtual Board Meetings: Sebi Chief
Other concerns specified by the Sebi chief included if investor voices are adequately heard during virtual shareholder meetings and whether shareholders have sufficient opportunity to pose questions to the management at such meets.
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Sebi chairman Ajay Tyagi on Thursday said confidentiality and security concerns of virtual board meets need to be addressed before they become a norm in the post-pandemic world.
He said there has been widespread adoption of technological inputs at corporates in the face of the pandemic, with both board meets and also annual general meetings going virtual.
Just in time for the new proxy season comes this
Report of the 2020 Multi-Stakeholder Working Group on Practices for Virtual Shareholder Meetings from the Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance, the Council of Institutional Investors and the Society for Corporate Governance. The report is replete with helpful guidance, detailing best and emerging practices for virtual shareholder meetings. The Working Group updates its 2018 report (see this PubCo post) in light of the deluge of pandemic-induced VSMs that were convened during the 2020 proxy season. Sorry to say, but it seems likely that this new proxy season will see a repeat for the same reason at least in the first part of the season so this report should be especially useful.
the current percentage of racially/ethnically diverse directors;
whether the board’s definition of diversity explicitly includes gender, race or ethnicity;
whether the board has a “Rooney Rule” policy requiring diverse candidates to be included in the initial pool of candidates when selecting new directors; and
board skills disclosure.
Although Glass Lewis will not make voting recommendations solely on the basis of this assessment in 2021, the assessment may be a contributing factor in recommendations when other board-related concerns have been identified.
Board Refreshment/Tenure. Although investor concerns regarding a lack of board refreshment relate to staleness of director skills and erosion of independence, investors also consider a lack of board refreshment an impediment to increasing board diversity. Beginning in 2021, Glass Lewis will note as a concern instances where the average tenure of nonexecutive directors is 10 years or more and no new independent directors