Two advisory firms, little known outside Wall Street but with very powerful enemies on it, are facing the full weight of the Trump administration, which blames them for a leftward shift in corporate boardrooms.
The White House is weighing an executive order that would dramatically limit the power of ISS and Glass Lewis, which recommend how shareholders should vote on corporate matters like CEO pay and social- and climate-related policies, The Wall Street Journal reported. Semafor hears, too, that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States may open its own probe: ISS is owned by Germany’s Deutsche Börse and Glass Lewis by a Canadian private-equity firm. (“ISS is proud of its history of providing high-quality, independent, and objective advice to the world’s most sophisticated institutional investors,” a spokesperson said. Glass Lewis did not immediately comment.)
The White House is also focused on how giant passive institutional investors like Vanguard and BlackRock vote their collective stakes of 20% or more at most US companies. “Mirror voting” — forcing them to cast their ballots in the same proportions that other investors do — has long been pushed by their critics, and is now getting the attention of the White House, people familiar with the discussions said.