On Wednesday, April 8, 2020, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) issued guidance on voting policies of various corporate governance-related issues that are likely to be implicated by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic during the 2020 proxy season. The guidance does not introduce any new formal policies. Rather, the guidance provides ISS’s perspective on selected market developments and application of several of its existing policies relevant to the U.S. markets. Importantly, the guidance sheds some light on which company-specific and market-specific facts and circumstances are more likely to influence the proxy advisor’s determinations during and following the pandemic.
