Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce shareholders Thursday rejected all shareholder proposals, including one calling for greater transparency of the management of the company's defined benefit finances and one calling for the company to pay its “fair share” of taxes, according to proxy voting results the company filed on the Canadian Securities Administrators' disclosure website.
The C$201.5 billion ($182.6 billion) Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Toronto; $183.3 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System, West Sacramento; $177.9 billion Florida State Board of Administration, Tallahassee; and C$140.8 billion Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Toronto; each opposed all the shareholder proposals.
The proposals were rejected by opposing votes ranging from 97.1% to 98.7%.
Toronto-based CIBC opposed all the shareholder proposals.
On the pension transparency proposal, the company called its disclosure “strong.” Its employee pension fund had C$6.3 billion in assets and C$6 billion in obligations as of Oct. 31, a $300 million funding surplus, up from a $300 million funding deficit a year earlier, according to a statement in its proxy materials. The improvement was primarily due to “strong investment returns and approximately $452 million of employer contributions made to the plans during 2013,” the statement said.
On the tax proposal, the company was asked “to disclose the steps it intends to take to comply with the (Organization of Economic Co-Operation and Development) plan introduced on July 20 with respect to the failure by multinationals to pay their fair share of taxes.”
“CIBC complies with the requirements of tax, money laundering and other laws of all of the countries within which it carries on business,” the company said in the statement.
The other shareholder proposals called for a phasing out of stock options as a form of compensation and company responses to large shareholder voting opposition to executive pay and election of directors.
Mouvement d'education et de defense des actionnaires (Shareholder Education and Advocacy Movement), based in Montreal, filed the five proposals.
