Electronic Voting Platform, etc.
For The Issuer
Since 1990's, while cross-holding of shares among Japanese issuers had been rapidly dissolved and foreign investors and institutional investors had increased their stock holdings, the need to foster an environment where institutional and foreign investors could exercise voting rights properly had increased.
Under such circumstances, the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) and Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (Broadridge) have established an "Electronic Voting Platform for Foreign and Institutional Investors," and started operation of the platform from companies with 2005 December year-end. As of the end of March 2025, approximately 1,800 companies have already agreed to participate in the platform.
For Institutional Investors
Along with the introduction of the platform, the environment for exercising voting rights among institutional investors has been improving significantly. However, many of the Japanese issuers are still holding shareholders’ meetings in June. Institutional investors are asking whether there is a way to examine proposals more efficiently and whether there are any services that contribute to enhancing individual disclosure and reports after exercising voting rights and revising the proxy voting guidelines.
Through ICJ, Inc., along with the platform, TSE provides a variety of services to institutional investors. Stewardship Solutions Platform Services (SSPS) is a service that promptly reviews each proposal based on each investor’s proprietary voting criteria (voting guidelines) whenever the proposals are disclosed by all issuers, including those that do not participate in the platform, and then provides the data-based primary judgment.
It also provides various types of data that are useful for voting-related tasks, including Resolution Results (interim reports), Proposal Classification Data based on the classification guidelines of “ Japan Investment Advisers Association “ and “ Investment Trust Association , Japan”, Extraction and Classification Data of material events for listed companies.For more information, see the SSPS Outline below.
About ICJ, Inc.
ICJ Incorporated is a joint venture company of TSE and Broadridge, which operates an Electronic Voting Platform for Foreign and Institutional Investors. For details, visit ICJ website.