A website unveiled today contains information on how institutional investors, from mutual funds to pension funds that make such disclosure, vote their proxies. For the few institutional investors that announce their proxy votes in advance of corporate annual meetings, such as the $240.1 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, Sacramento, the new site — http://proxydemocracy.org — also collects these votes to make them available to other investors researching how to vote their own proxies.
“CalPERS and many other institutional investors base their voting decisions on careful research,” Andy Eggers, president of ProxyDemocracy, said in a statement. “Knowing how they’re going to vote can be valuable” to investors without the resources to do their own research.
ProxyDemocracy, which is free, is funded by the $532 million Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York; the $100 million V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, New York; and the $3 million Panta Rhea Foundation, Sausalito, Calif.
