Shareholders deciding crucial issue of Dimon’s dual role as chief executive and chairman
JPMorgan is to provide investors with information about voting after Broadridge Financial Solutions, which keeps a tally on behalf of the bank, said it would stop furnishing information on proxy voting.
The financial services giant, which faces a crucial proxy vote on the dual role of its chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon at today’s AGM, will inform shareholders of the progress on its proxy voting, following Broadridge’s withdrawal due to concerns raised by clients.
‘Given concerns raised by multiple broker clients regarding the release of this voting, we have stopped releasing voting information to proponents,’ Broadridge said, as reported by Reuters news agency. Citing unidentified sources, Reuters says the U-turn comes after New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asked JPMorgan’s general counsel, Stephen Cutler, about what was happening in the vote.
Lyell Dampeer, an executive at Broadridge, last week said the firm was simply performing its role as ‘an agent of our brokers and clients’ – which involves ensuring SEC and NYSE rules are followed – and had acted at the request of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Wall Street’s main lobby group.
The vote comes amid rising pressure on Wall Street firms to split the roles of chairman and chief executive to improve oversight. These roles are combined at all major investment banks except Bank of America and Citigroup. CtW Investment Group, which initiated the vote to force Dimon out of one of his roles, has also sought to split the roles at Goldman Sachs. The bank reached a deal last month with the investor group to avert a vote on the dual role of Lloyd Blankfein by offering the lead independent director greater influence on the board.
Proxy advisory firm ISS earlier this month recommended that shareholders vote against the renomination of three JPMorgan directors and force Dimon to give up his dual role. It said it made the recommendation based on ‘material failures of stewardship and risk oversight’ in relation to more losses stemming from the so-called London Whale derivatives trading losses.
