AUSTIN - On Tuesday, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation into Glass Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services for potentially misleading institutional investors and public companies by issuing voting recommendations that advance radical political agendas rather than sound financial principles.
Glass Lewis and ISS collectively occupy more than 95 percent of the international market for proxy advisory services and provide services to shareholders and boards of large corporations to help them make investment decisions.
The two giants routinely issue proxy voting recommendations in conflict with the best financial interests of their fiduciaries.
According to Paxton, Glass Lewis and ISS instruct their proxies to generally vote for public companies making management decisions to implement DEI, gender-based hiring quotas, and aggressive climate activist policies.
Neither Glass Lewis nor ISS seem to support their radical guidelines with any economic analysis, only a word salad of corporate lingo, a press release states.
“Proxy firms like Glass Lewis and ISS too often sacrifice sound financial guidance to advance left-wing political goals, cheating not only investors but the American people as a whole,” said Paxton.
“Proxy advisors play a massive role in shaping corporate governance decisions in our country, affecting tens of billions of dollars. My office has zero tolerance for these woke corporations smuggling radical, liberal ideology into the companies they advise and into the entirety of America’s financial system.”
Paxton has issued Civil Investigative Demands to the proxy advisor duopoly to determine if they violated Texas consumer protection laws, including those prohibiting nondisclosures of material facts.
Paxton’s office also announced on Tuesday that the AG secured an expedited injunction hearing to suspend a vagrant shelter allegedly endangering nearby elementary students with drugs and violence
Paxton asserts Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center is a hotspot for drugged-out vagrants.
“Sunrise has blatantly endangered the lives of Texas schoolchildren by harboring violent, drug-ridden vagrants and then haphazardly unleashing them upon a quiet neighborhood and elementary school,” said Paxton.
“Students should be able to focus on learning at school, not worrying about if they are going to step on a playground drug needle. This hearing is an important step forward in ensuring that this community and the parents of Joslin Elementary students have their voices heard and that Sunrise stops threatening the safety of Texas kids as soon as possible.”
