Shareholders of a company have the right to vote on certain aspects of the company's business, such as the election of the company's directors and the appointment of its auditors. A proxy is the document that companies send to shareholders to get their voting instructions.
Investment portfolios holding shares of companies are generally entitled to exercise the voting rights attached to those shares. Voting may occur for fixed income securities and some private market investments, but it is much less common.
As an asset manager, RBC Global Asset Management (RBC GAM) acts in the best interests of the accounts that it manages, including segregated client accounts and investment funds (collectively, “portfolios”).

The RBC GAM Proxy Voting Guidelines (“Guidelines”) summarize the corporate governance principles which we will generally support through the exercise of votes on these issues.
Proposals, including those on business issues specific to the issuer or those raised by shareholders of the issuer, are addressed on a case-by-case basis with a focus on the potential impact of the vote on shareholder value.
The Guidelines are applied in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. In all other markets, RBC GAM utilizes the local proxy voting guidelines of Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (“ISS”).
For more information, please refer to the Guidelines.
RBC GAM has a process to manage the review and approval of vote instructions. Our Responsible Investment (RI) team manages the internal review of proxy voting to help ensure that the custom recommendations made by ISS correctly reflect the intentions of the Guidelines. This includes the review of upcoming company meetings, corresponding meeting research and custom vote recommendations by the RI team’s analysts. Our investment teams receive regular reports of upcoming meetings for companies held in the portfolios they manage; these reports may include flags and rationales for any recommended votes against the recommendations of management based on either the Guidelines or ISS’ local benchmark voting policy.
RBC GAM has established a Proxy Voting Committee (“Committee”) which includes the RBC GAM Global Chief Investment Officer. The mandate of the Committee is to receive information and provide advice on matters relating to the Guidelines and the exercise of a portfolio’s proxy voting rights.
In the event of a perceived or actual conflict of interest involving the exercise of proxy voting rights, we follow procedures to help ensure that a proxy is exercised in accordance with our Guidelines, uninfluenced by considerations other than the best interests of our portfolios.