NYU law professors Marcel Kahan and Edward Rock expect some state to permit mandatory shareholder arbitration now that the SEC has dropped its opposition. They tie the effect on state charter competition to an assumption that a significant fraction of public companies will want it over time.
Reality
- Evidence35
- Adoption8
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence45
SPACs made up 118 of the 208 IPOs in the SEC's first-half 2026 data, and corporate IPOs fell from 111 to 88. Proceeds still reached more than $137 billion against more than $27 billion a year earlier, carried by fewer, larger corporate deals.
Reality
- Evidence68
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence62
NYU law professors Marcel Kahan and Edward Rock say Delaware's traditional Corporation Law Council process broke down in 2024 and 2025. Their paper counts two sets of significant new rules adopted by legislation within two years; incorporators now weigh legislative politics too.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap
- Not scored
- Incentives35
- Confidence45
Glass Lewis proposes to replace its single benchmark voting policy with four perspectives from the 2028 US proxy season, Pay Governance reports. One pay program could draw different Say on Pay recommendations, so boards will need to tailor engagement to key shareholders.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
Harvard, CMU and MIT researchers link one standard deviation of early GP report sentiment to 3 to 4 points of annualized final return. The link fades by year five, while the weight on interim returns climbs from about 0.16 to 0.78.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap−5
- Incentives30
- Confidence60
Freshfields partner Ethan Klingsberg says AI agents pose a different challenge than LLMs to the line between board reliance and delegation. His test asks for a supporting record and directors informed enough to rely on it, but the text available ends before it says how that applies to agents.
Reality
- Evidence35
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap
- Not scored
- Incentives30
- Confidence45
FW Cook identified six companies whose 2026 proxy statements disclose moves to longer-horizon RSUs for executives. ISS's November 2025 policy change gave compensation committees more room to weight equity toward time-based awards.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption15
- Hype gap−5
- Incentives45
- Confidence55
Comments on the SEC's proposal to rescind Rule 14a-8 in its entirety are due November 20, 2026. Two shareholder advocates argue that companies tempted to welcome repeal would be giving up the rule's written grounds for excluding proposals.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap
- Not scored
- Incentives75
- Confidence45
Sullivan & Cromwell reports that governance proposals were the majority of Rule 14a-8 submissions in H1 2026 for the first time since 2012. The SEC's plan to eliminate the rule leaves the right to file for the core 2027 proxy season intact, the firm says.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap
- Not scored
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence60
In 2026 proxy filings, the median CEO was paid $17.5 million in the S&P 500 and $7.1 million in the Russell 3000, up 6% and 7% on a year earlier. Equity carries most of the growth since 2021. The report puts investor scrutiny on exceptional awards, above-target payouts and executive security.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap−5
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence58
Activists aimed a record 82% of their 179 campaigns this year at five sectors, led by industrials and technology, according to Barclays. Fewer funds are running those campaigns, so boards in industrials and technology face a smaller and slightly busier pool of challengers.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+5
- Incentives35
- Confidence55
Wachtell Lipton urges boards to check that cyber reporting captures AI risk, citing more than 22,000 AI-related complaints to the FBI in 2025. Delaware's Caremark duty turns on whether that reporting exists, so the firm wants a company's own AI agents inside it.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives40
- Confidence55
Meta's board rejected a 2018 shareholder call to study a privacy risk committee a year before the FTC fined the company $5 billion, an ICCR memo says. Outside holders backed the request at 45%, but Mark Zuckerberg's voting control cut the recorded tally to 11.55%, so the board's win mostly measured his vote.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+35
- Incentives65
- Confidence45
Debevoise lawyers say the SEC's September 16 plan to rescind Rule 14a-8 would make activist campaigns at listed closed-end funds and BDCs costlier. After the Supreme Court's June Saba ruling, it would give fund boards a second advantage, though only the ruling is settled law.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption10
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives55
- Confidence45
SEC estimates its proposed crypto self-custody fallback will cost each adviser that uses it $433,833 a year, and assumes about 823 firms will. After the CLARITY Act's Senate failure, that price helps decide which advisers can hold newly launched tokens for clients.
Perspective Coverage
15 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 21%
- Operator
- Operator 45%
- Investor
- Investor 34%
Reality
- Evidence76
- Adoption8
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives62
- Confidence70
DOJ's National Fraud Enforcement Division has told prosecutors to give "great weight" to 10 factors when deciding whether to charge a company with fraud. With every corporate case now routed through one new section, how fast a company finds and escalates misconduct shapes which options it keeps.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+8
- Incentives45
- Confidence55
ISS STOXX finds AI-related shareholder proposals have grown for five years even as environmental and social proposals declined. Investors now question whether disclosed AI oversight is adequate, and may turn to dialogue and proxy votes if proposal rules tighten.
Reality
- Evidence35
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives55
- Confidence35
Silicon Valley 150 companies averaged 89.2% say-on-pay support in 2026 against 88.1% at the S&P 100, a Fenwick & West survey found. The Valley also had more failed pay votes and weaker director floors, so its boards have a wider range of outcomes to plan against for 2027.
Reality
- Evidence66
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap0
- Incentives30
- Confidence62
Venture investors held over 5% of the median US venture-backed company for three to four years after listing, a study of 844 IPOs from 2002 to 2020 finds. Their boards run on control shared between funds, founders and outsiders well past the lock-up.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+5
- Incentives30
- Confidence55
Norges Bank Investment Management, a minority owner in more than 7,000 listed companies, says the race for listings is weakening investor protections. It says it will step up engagement on the issue, so exchanges that relax rules to win listings, and the companies that adopt those rules, face more pressure from a large minority holder.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives65
- Confidence55
Earlier coverage
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Leadership · October 5, 2026 · One report1 publisher
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Leadership · September 29, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- SEC proposes letting a filed 10-K replace the annual report sent with proxy statements
Leadership · September 28, 2026 · One report1 publisher
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Leadership · September 28, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- S&P 500 companies strip diversity data from sustainability reports they keep publishing
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- SEC lets AMM venues trade tokenized US stocks without exchange registration until 2031
Leadership · September 25, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- The SEC moves to hand the shareholder-proposal process back to the states
Leadership · September 23, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Chancery puts the new Section 144 safe harbor out of reach for a board that briefed a recused CEO
Leadership · September 24, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- European buyout sponsors changed chief executive in 69% of deals tracked to exit
Leadership · September 23, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- A three-year FDA pact opens the agency's nonpublic file to SEC reviewers
Leadership · September 22, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Three years of clawback filings turned up 19 disclosed recoveries
Leadership · September 22, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Biopharma buyers put a contingent payout in more than half of 2025's public deals
Leadership · September 21, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Mayer Brown warns that a designated board seat exposes the investor who filled it
Leadership · September 20, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Health care tops the 2026 forced CEO exit table on eight months of data
Leadership · September 19, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- DTCC's 23x5 trade-capture system goes live as Atkins presses case for 24-hour trading, with SIP and price-band work still in progress
Leadership · September 18, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- A five-year SEC exemption lets tokenized NMS stocks trade in permissioned liquidity pools
Leadership · September 17, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
- Sixteen Republican AGs sent four accounting firms thirty-eight document demands over climate disclosure
Leadership · September 17, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- The new mark-to-market pay number tests 30 years of pay-at-risk orthodoxy
Leadership · September 17, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Scrapping Rule 14a-8 would push proxy gatekeeping into corporate bylaws
Leadership · September 17, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Shareholder Commons founder asks boards to negotiate a replacement for Rule 14a-8
Leadership · September 16, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- FW Cook dates the window for changing 2027 pay design to late Q4 and early Q1
Leadership · September 16, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Personal security spread to a majority of S&P 500 CEOs within a single year
Leadership · September 15, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Fragmented proxy voting is making shareholder intent harder to predict
Leadership · September 15, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- PwC assigns a piece of AI oversight to every board committee
Leadership · September 14, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- A Goodwin memo puts crypto treasury companies on the shareholder activist target list
Leadership · September 14, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- The SEC's Form 10-S would hand boards a reporting cadence decision they remake every year
Leadership · September 13, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Atkins rejects the idea that AI-readable filings justify wider disclosure mandates
Leadership · September 12, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- The SEC has folded its accounting-fraud work into a single national enforcement unit
Leadership · September 10, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- The SEC would let a crypto asset leave securities status once its issuer certifies development has ceased
Leadership · September 11, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- One investor's 2026 resolutions cleared 25% support at 125 companies
Leadership · September 10, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Twenty years of French buyout data link pay compression to workforce turnover after buyouts
Leadership · September 10, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Investor appetite for ESG data pushes competing raters to cover the same ground
Leadership · September 9, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- Chancery's Envestnet dismissal raises the price of pleading a conflicted banker
Leadership · September 9, 2026 · One report1 publisher
- SEC moves to rescind the pay-to-play rule behind advisers' blanket contribution bans
Leadership · September 9, 2026 · One report1 publisher