Melville exec getting out the proxy vote

With all that has happened with markets, companies, stocks and the economy in the past few years, it would seem shareholders would be more active than ever in seeing to it that their voices are heard through their proxy votes.

But Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. of Melville, one of Long Island's largest companies, has found that the opposite is the case.

As a result, Broadridge chief executive Richard J. Daly is contacting his peers at the 1,000 largest companies in the country, asking them to urge investors to fill out proxy forms.

Those proxies, mailed out about this time of year in anticipation of the thousands of annual meetings in the spring, are tabulated to determine who the company directors will be and a host of other financial matters.

But not enough investors are paying attention. Broadridge, the nation's largest shareholder-communications company, said its research showed that in 2010 only one in 20 investors sent in their proxy forms, compared with one in five in 2009.

Daly told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., last week that public companies need to understand the "seriousness" of the issue and to reverse the "troubling decline."

As to the cause of the decline, there are several reasons. Daly said individual investors are more time-pressed than ever.

"There has been an overwhelming amount of information people are managing through on a daily basis," Daly said. "Think of your in-box today as opposed to a few years ago."

Charles Rotblut, a vice president at Chicago-based American Association of Individual Investors, said the decline in investor participation does not come as a surprise "It's a trend we're seeing in politics in terms of voting. There's a certain sense that your vote won't matter."

In hopes of encouraging higher participation, Broadridge last year introduced its Proxy Vote.com platform, which allows investors to cast votes on mobile data devices such as smart phones and tablets.

"The technology is there for investors to participate," Daly said. "What we need to do is to raise awareness."