4 - Shareholder Stewardship in the Netherlands

Summary

This chapter studies the institutional investor’s voice in the Netherlands, focusing on shareholder voting in particular. The Dutch Stewardship Code, developed by institutional investor platform Eumedion, emphasizes the engagement and responsibilities of institutional investors in Dutch listed companies and should further boost engagement with investees. With a new dataset, the authors observe that institutional investors critically consider (non-)current voting items which could negatively affect shareholder rights, like some of the amendments of the articles of association as well as remuneration packages of directors that contain insufficient or inappropriate incentives. Compared to other investors, institutional investors show significantly higher opposition rates. Particularly, Eumedion members show even higher opposition rates than other institutional investors. However, there may still be room for a stronger focus on the activities and outcomes of stewardship, including changing the behaviour of companies, and not just policy statements.