TheCorporateCounsel.net

We’ve posted the transcript for our recent webcast for members, “ISS Forecast for 2022 Proxy Season.” Marc Goldstein, Head of US Research at ISS, was joined by Ning Chiu from Davis Polk and Bob Lamm from Gunster to review what happened in the 2021 proxy season, the changes that ISS is making to its policies in 2022, and a variety of hot topics for the upcoming proxy season. Here’s what Marc had to say about ISS’s new climate accountability policy:

The other aspect of climate I wanted to mention is a new climate accountability policy, which is a new approach for us. We’re rolling it out fairly slowly, by which I mean it’s baby steps for 2022. We are looking at high-emitting companies as identified by Climate Action 100+, which is 167 companies globally. However, the policy actually isn’t going to be applied in every single country for 2022. In the U.S., UK, continental Europe and Russia, we’re going to be applying the accountability policy at companies that are both significant carbon emitters and also have poor disclosure and no greenhouse gas reduction targets.

We are setting the bar low for 2022 and we don’t expect a lot of negative recommendations under this policy. It’s possible that we may raise the bar in future years, but we would be happy to be able to conclude that every company clears the bar, so that we don’t feel compelled to recommend votes against directors. Our clients have made it very clear to us that this is a risk oversight issue and Boards need to be on top of these risks, taking them seriously and taking steps to align the business with the reality of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to renewable energy.

– Liz Dunshee