Earlier this year, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. released its Governance QuickScore 2.0 data verification portal (see our March Post). It has recently announced the launch of another portal giving all U.S. public companies that have an equity-based compensation plan listed on their proxy ballot for shareholder approval the opportunity to verify the data regarding such equity compensation plan. Companies that file their proxy statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission after September 8, 2014 can use this ISS platform to verify the data that ISS has collected in order to evaluate the equity plan. For most companies, a portal window will open within 12 business days following the submission of proxy materials to the SEC, allowing companies to verify data and/or request changes. This window is open only for a very short period — two business days. Due to this short time frame, companies should act quickly once notification of the open window is received from ISS. ISS expects that it will generally respond to data update requests within five business days of such request via email and the web platform.
Companies have to register for the equity plan verification portal before they can begin using it. Companies that anticipate using ISS’s new equity plan data verification portal should begin the registration process as soon as feasibly possible, as it will take ISS five to seven business days to process the request. Only ISS evaluated companies (and not their advisors) may register for the portal.
To see ISS’s FAQ’s for Equity Plan Data Verification, follow this link.
