Proxy Voting and NB Votes

Proxy voting is an integral component of our investment process, and our voting intentions represent what we believe is in the best financial interest of our clients. Through NB Votes, we publish select voting intentions ahead of shareholder meetings, focusing on companies where clients have meaningful economic exposure. The initiative enhances transparency by providing insight into our analysis and how our long-term, active approach informs voting on financially material governance and engagement issues.

Governance and Engagement Principles

Our governance and engagement principles reflect the issues we believe are most relevant to long-term value creation and provide a consistent framework for assessing and categorizing proposals across companies and markets.

Strategy

Companies should adopt, formulate, and communicate value-enhancing long-term strategies.

Incentives

Companies should align management incentives with long-term shareholder goals.

Board Independence

Effective boards of directors must be truly independent.

Shareholder Representation

Companies should strive to maximize shareholder representation.

Capital Deployment

Companies should allocate capital to maximize long-term risk-adjusted shareholder value.

Transparency and Communications

Companies should provide transparency in communication and reporting.

Environmental Issues

Companies should consider the financially material impacts of the environmental risks and opportunities on their business and operations.

Social Issues

Companies should actively assess the financially material impacts of risks and opportunities pertaining to human capital management, customers, local communities and society on their business and operations.

Risk Management

Boards of directors should actively engage with management to evaluate and control enterprise risk.

Proxy Voting Overview

Proxy Voting Activity

We believe voting proxies on behalf of our clients is an important component of creating shareholder value. This engagement fulfills our fiduciary responsibility to protect our clients’ best interests and our Governance and Proxy Committee oversees our proxy voting policies and processes to ensure there are no conflicts of interest. We provide guidelines and procedures to emphasize our transparency in proxy voting to clients.