SEC Sees More Companies Asking to Swat Away Investor Proposals

The SEC has seen a jump in corporate bids to keep shareholder proposals off the ballots at their annual meetings, a senior commission official said Tuesday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has received 261 so-called no action requests as of last week from companies this year compared to 177 at the same time last year, said Michael Seaman, chief counsel of the SEC’s division of corporation finance, at the Practising Law Institute’s annual SEC Speaks conference in Washington.

No-action requests offer companies an opportunity to seek the SEC’s support in blocking investor proposals that may be repetitive or seek to ...