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Yesterday, I blogged that Glass Lewis might be considering an eventual pivot away from providing voting recommendations and toward helping investor clients develop their own custom policies – but to take it with a grain of salt, because the business folks at the proxy advisor might change their minds.

Apparently, at this point, the pivot plan has already been shelved (if it ever got off the shelf in the first place). Mike Levin of The Activist Investor shared a report from The Deal in which a senior executive said it would continue to produce proxy analysis and vote recommendations that follow those guidelines. (I’ll note that even the original report from Semafor noted none of this would happen anytime soon, if at all.)

Mike points out that proxy advisors get an outsized amount of attention. I agree that those of us “in the weeds” are pretty invested in all of the ups, downs, and proclamations – since on the corporate side, we’re likely to get blamed if something goes sideways! Unfortunately, in some cases, executives don’t pay attention until there’s a low vote for say-on-pay or director elections. And then – yes – resentment and outsized attention ensues. Mike gives this helpful context of the parts of Glass Lewis’s business – analysis, advice, and processing:

GL appears to have considered abandoning the “advice” element of its service lineup.

It will continue to analyze the subjects on which its clients vote. This means assembling the voluminous data and documents needed to understand those subjects, running that information through its sophisticated models, and describing how the results line up against voting policies.

It will also continue to process votes. This means handling all the arcane procedures for a client to complete proxy cards, submit votes, track results, write reports, etc. etc.

The advice segment of these services brings trouble. Here it takes a stand on which directors and proposals to support or oppose, and whether to approve exec comp. They can’t possibly please enough people to mitigate the controversies that inevitably occur. Notably, the GL website doesn’t mention its voting advice, or at least we couldn’t find it among all the other “Investor Solutions” it provides.

Mike also shares his hunch that some of Glass Lewis’s pension fund clients may prefer continued recommendations rather than their own custom policies. Glass Lewis’s specific business decisions aside, the proxy voting landscape continues to evolve – and we’ll keep paying attention to changes!

– Liz Dunshee