Nell Minow is the Vice Chair of ValueEdge Advisors.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts on proxy advisory firms and antitrust concerns. I welcome your questions and will submit supplemental materials as necessary following this session.
My connection to this field is that when I left the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division during the Reagan administration as a special assistant to now-Judge Douglas Ginsburg, I was the fourth person hired and the first General Counsel at Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). I left as President of ISS in 1990 and remained on its board of directors until 1992. While I have remained in the field of corporate governance ever since, always on behalf of shareholders, I have no connection to any company providing proxy advisory services, and am appearing today on my own behalf, and not representing or being paid by anyone. Neither I, my partners, or my clients are in any way financially benefitted by the matters covered in this hearing, except as they affect the options available for purchase by institutional investors to evaluate investment risk and the overall robustness of our capital markets.
Before I went to DOJ, ISS founder Bob Monks and I met working on President Reagan’s Regulatory Relief initiative, he in then-Vice President Bush’s office and I at the Office of Management and Budget. It may help you understand my perspective if I explain that my education at the University of Chicago Law School, those two positions in government, and my career in the private sector as a founder or co-founder of five companies, three of which have been sold, reflects my commitment to free markets as the foundation for a healthy economy. That means limiting federal government interference most of the time to matters of public health and safety, the social safety net, and resolving conflicts of interest and collective choice problems.
