The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:33:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.13 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png E-Proxy Reform, Activism, and the Decline in Retail Shareholder Voting – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 E-Proxy Reform, Activism, and the Decline in Retail Shareholder Voting https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2011/01/09/e-proxy-reform-activism-and-the-decline-in-retail-shareholder-voting/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=e-proxy-reform-activism-and-the-decline-in-retail-shareholder-voting https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2011/01/09/e-proxy-reform-activism-and-the-decline-in-retail-shareholder-voting/#comments Sun, 09 Jan 2011 16:59:42 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/?p=14778?d=20150120094922EST Posted by Scott Hirst, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on Sunday, January 9, 2011
Editor's Note:

Fabio Saccone works with the Bank of Italy as part of the unit that supervises the restructuring and resolution of distressed financial institutions.

Shareholder voting is a hot button issue for regulators and policy makers in the United States as well as in Europe. However, amending the proxy system can be challenging, given the many unintended consequences of single changes on the system as a whole. The recent e-proxy reform by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a case in point. Adopted by the SEC in 2007 and effective for all companies starting from the 2009 proxy season, the e-proxy rules require issuers to post all proxy materials on a public website and to choose between the “full set delivery” option and the “notice only” option to deliver such materials to shareholders. While the former is substantially similar to the traditional means of providing proxy materials in paper, the latter allows issuers, in lieu of mailing hard copies of the proxy materials to shareholders, to send them a notice informing that the proxy materials are available on a web site. The new delivery system has brought significant savings on printing and mailing costs but, at the same time, has shown some flaws.

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