ISS just published the results of its annual policy survey. The results are available at:
http://www.issgovernance.com/files/ISS2013-2014PolicySurveyResultsReport.pdf
ISS conducted the policy survey from July 31, 2013 through September 13, 2013. ISS received over 500 responses, 128 from institutional shareholders and 350 corporate issuers (92% of whom were located in the U.S.).
There is a hint in the responses that ISS might consider implementing a policy with respect to director tenure, as a majority (74%) of institutional shareholders indicated long director tenure was problematic. If it does, the responses seem to suggest that ISS might choose 15 years as the initial line-in-the-sand for judging long director tenure. But, we’ll have to keep an eye out on the draft ISS policies to see if a new policy on director tenure gets proposed.
On equity plan proposals, 75% of institutional shareholders indicated that they significantly weigh performance conditions on awards, cost of equity plans, and other plan features if ISS moves to a holistic approach to equity plan evaluation. I think it is likely that ISS will propose such a holistic policy with respect to equity plan proposals. Unfortunately, this will cause less certainty for issuers when trying to figure out their equity plan proposals as they won’t necessarily have one hundred percent certainty that a particular combination of plan language, costs and features would result in support from ISS. But, we’ll have to wait and see what policy ISS proposes (if any) as part fo its draft policy release for the 2014 proxy season, which I expect out later this month or early next month.