Corporate Governance & Compensation Consulting

Shareholder activists are exerting more influence on corporations and their Boards. Georgeson's consulting services prepare you to meet these challenges. We prepare vote projections for both management and shareholder sponsored proposals. We will also assist companies in designing compensation related proposals that are acceptable to shareholders.

Shareholder Analysis
Institutional shareholders often have specific voting policies on corporate governance issues or subscribe to advisory services, such as Risk Metrics ISS or Glass Lewis. These firms advise their institutional investor clients how to vote on your proxy proposals. Retail shareholders can be influential in a proxy solicitation when they know their vote is important. We are experts at segmenting a shareholder base so that we contact the right shareholders and ensure that they understand our clients' messages and cast their votes appropriately.

Vote Projection
The success of any solicitation is heavily influenced by a company's ownership profile. By drawing upon our shareholder composition analysis, institutional investor profiles and our knowledge of institutional voting policies we can predict with a high degree of accuracy how much shareholder support a proposal will attract. This analysis helps us determine what kind of solicitation campaign will be necessary to achieve a successful vote for our client.

Compensation Consulting
Recent changes in shareholder approval requirements for equity-based compensation plans mean solicitations for stock-based incentive plans are becoming significantly more challenging. Implementation of these plans now requires careful consideration and in-depth strategic planning. Georgeson provides an intelligent planning tool that has already guided hundreds of companies through difficult option plan solicitations. The service is based on our research about the stock plan voting guidelines of hundreds of institutional shareholders, their advisors and our consistent ability to provide highly accurate multiple-scenario vote forecasts.