의결권행사자문회사 관련 규제론에 대한 재고 － 주주가치의 확대를 위한 의결권행사자문회사의 역할을 기대하며 －

While institutional shareholders in Korea don’t seem to vote actively in shareholders’ meeting yet, they might use proxy advisory firms more frequently in the near future when the roles and responsibilities of institutional shareholders as fiduciaries will be emphasized. Maybe the fact itself that institutional shareholders vote by obtaining appropriate helps from proxy advisory firms could prove that they fulfill their fiduciary duties. Institutional shareholders have not filed any complaints about the policies of ISS which has been a front-runner among many proxy advisory firms. If there had been any potential complaint, competitors of ISS could have used it by highlighting the differences of their policies, which has not happened yet. Regulation of the proxy advisory firms might not be advantageous to management of issuer who insists such regualtions. Proxy advisory firms, as experts without interests, could add invaluable trust to the management, supporting the insistence of management. Conclusively, the market could regulate the actions of proxy advisory firms by itself and clients are satisfied with the services of proxy advisory firms. It might be originated from the interests of issuers’ managements who would like to interfere with the effects of proxy advisory service that they insist on enforcement of regulations to proxy advisory firms. Instead, vitalization of proxy advisory service is necessary for expansion of shareholder value. However, new proxy advisory firms are hard to compete with the global companies such as ISS, Class Lewis, etc. in Korea because the entry barrier of proxy advisory service market to new enterers is very high. It should be taken into consideration also that foreign proxy advisory firms might provide the services not apposite to Korean cases. So, the efforts of the Korean government to nurture domestic proxy advisory firms is needed now.