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ISS to Rebrand and Enhance QuickScore
Practical Law Legal Update w-004-3746 (Approx. 3 pages)
ISS to Rebrand and Enhance QuickScore
by Practical Law Corporate & Securities
| Published on 03 Nov 2016 • USA (National/Federal) |
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) announced that it will rebrand and enhance its QuickScore platform. The new platform will be called ISS QualityScore.
On October 31, 2016, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) announced that it will rebrand its QuickScore platform. Effective November 21, 2016, the platform will be called ISS QualityScore to better reflect institutional investors' use of the scores as a quality measure for portfolio companies.
ISS has also enhanced the platform by including the following new ratings factors applicable to US companies:
- Board structure. New factors include:
- proportion of female directors;
- proportion of non-executive directors on the board for less than six years (and any other mechanisms to encourage director refreshment);
- confirmation of a formal succession plan for the CEO and key executive officers;
- material failures of governance; and
- adequate response by the board to low support for certain management proposals.
- Executive compensation. Employment of at least one metric that compares the company's performance to a benchmark or peer group.
- Audit and risk oversight. Tenure of the external auditor.
- Shareholder rights. New factors include:
- exclusive venue/forum provision;
- fee-shifting provision;
- representative claim limitation or other significant litigation rights;
- proxy access bylaw provisions, including ownership thresholds, ownership duration thresholds, cap on shareholder nominees to fill board seats, and aggregation limits on shareholders to form a nominating group;
- whether the company can classify its board without shareholder approval;
- whether shareholders have the right to amend the bylaws; and
- whether the company can materially modify its capital structure without shareholder approval.
ISS QualityScore subscribers will have the ability to access and analyze the underlying data from which the scores are generated, allowing them to screen portfolio companies against hundreds of corporate governance factors or perform detailed side by side comparisons of two or more companies' profiles.
To learn more about the role of proxy advisors, see Practice Note, Developing Relationships with Proxy Advisory Firms.