AGM Season 2023: Voting outcomes on compensation motions

Each year during the AGM season, the dynamics of the Swiss corporate landscape and the vibrant nature of its market players become evident. Executive compensation is in the focus of investors, proxy advisors and the broader public. Over the last years, we observed an increasingly critical voting behaviour on the compensation motions.

Our downloadable overview provides information on the voting trends and highlights potential hot topics. Our goal is to provide you with valuable insights into the current Swiss market developments by updating this voting outcome overview on a regular basis.

Key findings

Out of the top 100* Swiss companies, all have been analysed. The latest key findings are the following:

• Consultative vote on the compensation report
  Shareholders’ opposition remains high, with approval rates being on a similarly low level as in the previous year. Particularly, there are several companies with an approval rate (significantly) below the "red flag" threshold of 80%.
• Binding votes on the compensation amounts
  Although shareholders continue to express their dissent with executive compensation mainly via the consultative vote on the compensation report, they keep raising concerns via the binding compensation motions as well.
• Proxy advisors’ voting recommendations
  For all compensation motions, the support of the two Swiss-based proxy advisors Ethos and Inrate continues to be remarkably low.
  

_{* The SMI consists of the largest 20 companies (1-20) and the SMIM of the 30 next largest companies (21-50). Together they form the SMI Expanded (1-50). The SPI50 is composed of the remaining 50 companies (51-100) within the 100 largest Swiss listed companies (Top 100). Note that a few companies have multiple share classes listed within the Top 100 (e.g. registered and bearer shares, or registered shares and participation certificates). Consequently, 27 companies are covered for the SMIM and 49 for the SPI50 in 2023.}