Global proxy voting database: An idea whose time has come?

THE proxy voting system has taken on added importance amid growing interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues and how investors vote on related shareholder proposals.

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis, in particular, provide critical guidance, and shareholders who want to vote their proxies depend on them to execute their proxy votes in a thoughtful and transparent manner. But with only two players dominating the space, are investors really getting the diversity of perspectives they need to make informed proxy votes?

That’s where a new database, OxProx, comes in. Founded by Ian Robertson who co-authored this article, OxProx is a social venture spin-off with the University of Oxford and is the first publicly accessible service that gathers, examines, and compares proxy voting records among asset owners and asset managers from across the globe.