The FSA has finalized its revision of the Stewardship Code. Perhaps the biggest change is that it now encourages signatories to disclose their voting records “for each investee company on a per-agenda basis”, something I proposed to the FSA in 2010 on a somewhat firmer basis but was ignored. However as you can see below, this is a “comply or explain rule”, thus weakening it to some extent:
“Institutional investors should disclose voting records for each investee company on an individual agenda item basis. (If there is a reason to believe it inappropriate to disclose such company-specific voting records on an individual agenda item basis due to the specific circumstances of an investor, the investor should proactively explain the reason. Institutional investors should at a minimum aggregate the voting records into each major kind of proposal, and publicly disclose them.)”
See:
http://www.fsa.go.jp/en/refer/councils/stewardship/
Here is a “track changes” version of the new code compared to the previous version:
http://www.fsa.go.jp/en/refer/councils/stewardship/20170529/02.pdf
The FSA also clarifies various legal issues here:
http://www.fsa.go.jp/en/refer/councils/stewardship/20140226.pdf
Nicholas Benes