Governance Risk Indicators (GRId) Analytics

GRId Analytics Overview

As investing becomes ever more data driven and investors seek new ways to evaluate their portfolio companies with respect to corporate governance, corporate issuers need to be aware of how they are perceived by investors and how they compare with peer companies. In addition, corporate governance best practices continue to evolve, meaning that measures of governance need to be nimble enough to change as governance requirements and disclosures change.

Institutional Shareholder Services meets this need with a new measure of governance-related risk – Governance Risk Indicators (GRId).

Closely aligned with ISS’ benchmark proxy voting policies, the GRId Indicators provide an absolute measure of concern (low, medium, high) across four independent dimensions of governance:

• Board
• Compensation/Remuneration
• Shareholder Rights
• Audit

Each company is assessed using 60 to 80 variables depending on their local market and the GRId Indicators are derived based upon that assessment. Markets currently covered in GRId include the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.

GRId Analytics provides corporate issuers a premium set of interactive tools based on the GRId data and methodology. These tools enable you to:

• Perform “what-if” analyses to understand how changes in your governance structure might impact the Indicators for your company
• Benchmark GRId data for self-selected, industry or index peer groups
• Receive email alerts on industry trends
• Prepare reports to compare your Indicators with those of peer companies

Issuers also have access to a free Data Verification site, where they can view their GRId indicators and verify the underlying data used to derive them. Comments are automatically submitted to ISS' GRId team and replies to the inquiry send back to the company within 5 business days.