Allen Matkins’ recent posts: “ISS' Arbitrary And Capricious Assessment Of Board Diversity” and “Want To Be Classified As "Diverse"? According To ISS, Be A Member Of The Right Club” take aim at ISS’s new racial/ethnic director diversity classifications and determinations (see our reports here, here and here), which are currently baked into its Socially Responsible Investing and Catholic Faith-Based specialty policies, and that will be used to generate adverse vote recommendations for boards lacking “apparent” racial/ethnic diversity under its US benchmark policy for meetings on or after February 1, 2022, at Russell 3000 and S&P 1500 companies.
Among the stated concerns are the definitions of particular ethnicity types that exclude persons of certain origins (thus categorizing them, by default, into the Caucasian/White, or non-diverse, categories), and ISS’s review of directors’ affiliations to “relevant associations and organizations focused on race and/or ethnicity” unless definitive information is otherwise disclosed.
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This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!