ISS expands range of governance scoring tool
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS),has launched a new release of QuickScore,  its global corporate governance scoring solution. Subscribers will now be able to determine whether portfolio companies across the Russell 3000 in the USA allow for proxy access, or investors’ ability to nominate corporate board members. Coverage for Canada will expand to include more than 150 companies outside the S&P TSX Composite Index. For France, an additional factor is being added regarding the independent director composition of shareholder elected board members. For the UK and Ireland, coverage will be expanded to the FTSE All Share index (ex-unit trusts) plus additional Irish companies from the ISEQ-Overall. In South Africa, coverage expansion will include extra companies from the FTSE JSE-40 and JSE-MidCap.

ROCKVILLE, MD. (November 23, 2015) – Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS), a leading provider of corporate governance solutions to the global financial community, today launched a new release of QuickScore, ISS’ state-of-the-art global corporate governance scoring solution for institutional investors.

Key updates in this QuickScore release, include:

United States: QuickScore subscribers will now be able to determine whether portfolio companies across the Russell 3000 allow for proxy access, or investors’ ability to nominate corporate board members. For this iteration of QuickScore, the factor is being provided for screening purposes only and will not be scored.

Canada: Coverage for Canada will be expanded to include more than 150 companies outside the S&P TSX Composite Index. Moreover, all covered companies in the market will be subject to five additional factors covering voting by shareholders.

France: an additional factor is being added regarding the independent director composition of shareholder elected board members.

United Kingdom & Ireland: Coverage expansion to the FTSE All Share index (ex-unit trusts) plus additional Irish companies from the ISEQ-Overall.

South Africa: Coverage expansion to include extra companies from the FTSE JSE-40 and JSE-MidCap.

“With these latest enhancements to QuickScore, subscribers will benefit from broader and deeper portfolio coverage complemented by updated methodologies and additional data-points, including information about proxy access at U.S. companies ,” said Marija Kramer, ISS’ Head of Product Development. “We will continue with our commitment to provide our clients the latest in tools and services to address their needs as the governance landscape shifts rapidly.”

At its core, QuickScore is designed to help investors identify and measure corporate governance risk across portfolio companies. QuickScore provides a score for each company in its coverage universe that measures the company’s level of corporate governance risk both overall and based on four broad pillars: board structure, compensation/remuneration, shareholder rights, and audit & risk oversight.

Importantly, QuickScore subscribers have the ability to access and analyze the underlying data from which the scores are generated, allowing them to screen portfolio companies against hundreds of corporate governance factors or perform detailed side by side comparisons of two or more companies’ profiles.