The policies aim to provide crucial guidance to public companies amid the growing importance of ESG in proxy voting.

By Paul A. Davies, Michael D. Green, Andra Troy, and James Bee

In late 2021, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass, Lewis & Co (Glass Lewis), the two leading proxy advisory firms, released updated policy documents for the 2022 proxy season.

Notably, both ISS and Glass Lewis have given considerable attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters, reflecting the rapidly increasing importance of ESG to shareholder relations at public companies. The Glass Lewis policies will apply from January 1, 2022, and the ISS policies will apply from February 1, 2022.

This blog post reviews the major updates in the ISS and Glass Lewis policies as they relate to key ESG issues, and considers the similarities and differences of each firm’s policies in certain areas.