공적 연기금 위탁운용 주식의 의결권 행사 효율화 방안에 관한 연구

This study examined the external management practices of domestic equities by Korean public pension funds and the current status of proxy voting on such equities, proposing remedies for proxy voting on equities externally managed by the public pension funds. Unlike fixed income, equities are mostly managed externally by the public pension funds. It was found that the smaller a fund is and the more active the investment strategy of applicable portfolio is, the more applicable fund relies on external management of equities. All of the externally managed domestic equities are held in discretionary investment assets and the public pension funds exercised voting rights on all such domestic equities, whether they were managed internally or externally. This is because the Capital Market Act prohibits proxy voting on equities held in discretionary investment assets as an unfair trade practice. In the United States, proxy voting on equities held in discretionary investment assets is not prohibited, but discretionary investment managers are obligated to develop and enforce proxy voting standards and publicly disclose information related to proxy voting for customers to access. Corporate pension funds in Japan also delegate voting rights on all equities held in discretionary investment assets to applicable external investment managers, and the external investment managers are obligated to submit proxy voting standards to the pension funds and report information related to proxy voting to the pension fund managers. This study proposed five strategies to enable more efficient proxy voting on equities externally managed by public pension funds: firstly, proxy voting can be permitted on equities held in discretionary investment assets externally managed at least by professional investors and the professional investors required to develop proxy voting standards and publicly notify or disclose such standards to applicable clients; secondly, collective investment schemes actively committed to corporate governance improvement can be utilized in part as opposed to the practice of trusting assets only to discretionary investment managers; thirdly, applicable proxy voting standards and current practices can be included in external asset manager selection criteria, with documents supporting such standards and practices to be submitted in the selection process; fourthly, independent proxy advisory firms can be utilized to enable external investment managers exercising voting rights as proxies to facilitate proxy voting relatively independent of the conflict of interest between external investment manager and invested firms, policy stances of government organizations, political pressure, etc.; and fifthly, proxy voting guidelines issued by public pension funds can be rendered more specific by a notch to bolster up consistency and objectivity of proxy voting practices.