时间：2022-09-17 03:23:49
Shareholder activism is common in developed markets. Institutional investors with signifi cant minority stakes routinely haul companies over the coals for any perceived shareholderunfriendly actions.
In India, though, such activism is rarely on display. Indeed, institutions seldom take on company managements, preferring to adopt a policy of least resistance.
BT examined the voting disclosures of the top fi ve mutual funds in India for 2011/12 and the result was telling. Fund houses are mandated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to disclose at the end of a fiscal year how they voted on resolutions of their investee companies. They do not have to give the rationale for the voting decision.
HDFC Mutual Fund abstained from voting on 163 resolutions, or over 34 per cent of the total of 474 management and shareholder proposals. The balance votes were for the proposals – signifi cantly the fund has never voted against.
Reliance Mutual Fund has a better record. It abstained from voting on only 29 out of 2,071 resolutions, which is less than two per cent. The fund house voted in favour of 2,020 and voted against 22, which included all the seven in the March 15 annual general meeting of Escorts.
ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund abstained from voting on 223 out of 225 resolutions, and voted in favour of two in two state-owned banks. ICICI Prudential’s disclosures were the most user unfriendly with its website not allowing the user to search, save or take prints. “We adhere to the prescribed disclosure norms and how to present them is our prerogative,” said Nimesh Shah, Managing Director and CEO of ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company. He also defends the fund’s policy of abstaining. “We are careful at the start, and hence we do not vote unless there is something detrimental to the interest of our investors,” he says.
UTI Mutual Fund abstained from voting on 2,444 out of 2,616 resolutions, or over 93 per cent of the total. The fund house voted for 170 resolutions and voted against just two. Birla Sun Life is yet to make its disclosures for the fi nancial year ended March 2012.
The apathetic attitude of fund houses towards shareholder and management resolutions, with most abstaining from voting, has disappointed investor associations.“Mutual funds abstaining from resolutions take a very narrow view of their responsibility,” says Virendra Jain, President of Delhi-based Midas Touch Investors Association. SEBI’s voting disclosure norms are only a half-hearted attempt to improve corporate governance, he adds.
SEBI, though, asserts that it has done enough. “As a regulator, SEBI’s function is not to keep a tab on who is voting and who is not,” says U.K. Sinha, Chairman.
H.N. Sinor, CEO, Association of Mutual Funds in India(AMFI), sees a silver lining in the recent trend of rising investor activism. “There is a fi duciary obligation where the mutual fund trustees are answerable to their investors.”