SCOOP: Rep. Troy Downing "extraordinarily pleased" about Trump administration's work on proxy advisor duopoly
Why Troy Downing likes the Trump administration's moves.
Hill Republicans are “extraordinarily pleased” with the Trump administration’s efforts to limit the influence of Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis.
Rep. Troy Downing (R., Mont.), a member of the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Small Business, is “extraordinarily pleased to see the Trump administration taking a closer look at the proxy advisory duopoly to safeguard the financial future of millions of Americans,” he told the Washington Reporter.
“Proxy advisory firms like ISS and Glass Lewis routinely make recommendations in favor of progressive shareholder proposals to the detriment of the retail investors that their clients represent,” Downing added. “My colleagues and I on the House Financial Services Committee have worked tirelessly to shed light on this malfeasance.”
Downing’s comments come as Republicans scrutinize progressive environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently announced antitrust probes into ISS and Glass Lewis focused on ESG issues.
The Reporter has previously covered the problem of passive investment funds dictating corporate policy for progressive purposes. At a recent Congressional hearing, Republicans criticized firms like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard for pushing far-left policies through shareholder voting processes.
“Asset managers like BlackRock, along with proxy advisors Glass Lewis and ISS, have misused and abused their positions as fiduciaries to further their own politics, taking the shares and votes of their clients and using them to bully boards and c-suites out of the business of serving their customers and instead forcing a noxious agenda down consumers’ throats,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, told the Reporter. “Our hope is that the ultimate action is severe enough to curtail these bad actors. As BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink infamously said, sometimes ‘you have to force behaviors’ to change.”