A majority of private sector, pension fund trustees are giving complete discretion for proxy votes to the firms that manage their funds, according to a survey by the Shareholder Association for Research and Education(SHARE).
Investment managers and proxy-voting services that have Canadian pension funds as clients were surveyed. The 34 firms manage $371.6 billion in pension assets, $88.5 billion of which are invested in domestic equities.
Seventy-three percent of the firms surveyed said they had been given complete discretion to vote the proxies for more than 85% of the pension fund assets they manage.
“For trustees, the failure to manage or guide outside investment firms on how to vote proxies is a very serious matter,” says Laura O’Neill, director of law and policy. “There is a very real danger that they could be found in violation of the Standard of Care provision found in federal and provincial pensions benefits legislation.”
For a copy of the survey, click here.
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