U.S. Chamber Concerned Over SEC Broker Vote

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Tom Quaadman, Executive Director for Financial Reporting at the U.S. Chamber's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness today responded to the SEC's actions to eliminate the broker vote. The Chamber is disturbed by the Commission's decision to remove the ability of brokers to vote uninstructed shares of their customers in uncontested elections of public company directors.

"This new rule dramatically shifts additional voting power from individual shareholders to activist investors," said Quaadman. "Unregulated entities such as proxy advisory services will wield great influence in the proxy voting process without any standardized disclosure of conflicts of interest. The SEC has missed an opportunity to improve proxy voting participation and allowed certain investors to jump to the head of the line."

Quaadman noted that the Chamber strongly supports the goal of improving communications between companies and all of its shareholders, but believes that the SEC should take a comprehensive view of all market participants in examining and improving the proxy voting process before making incremental changes that adversely affect certain participants.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world's largest business federation representing more
than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.

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