Meet the Corporate Governance Awards winners – part one: Regions Financial
Earlier this month Governance Intelligence presented our 17th annual Corporate Governance Awards at a gala event in New York.
The awards celebrate outstanding achievements by the governance profession in areas such as hosting AGMs, compliance and ethics programs, ESG reporting, entity management, use of technology, proxy statements, investor engagement and corporate transactions.
Over the next few episodes of the podcast we’ll hear from some of the winners about the work that the judges felt put them ahead of the other worthy nominees, and some of the challenges they see in the coming year.
Regions Financial Corporation was named governance team of the year (small to mid-cap) and won the prize for best shareholder engagement (small to mid-cap). It was also shortlisted for Best proxy statement (mid-cap) and Best use of technology. The firm’s Mary Wheeler was shortlisted in the Rising star category.
In this episode Andrew Nix, executive vice president, chief governance officer and deputy general counsel at Regions Financial, talks about the company’s shareholder engagement program, revamping its proxy statement, operating in a complex environment of pro- and anti-ESG forces and his team’s culture.
One of the interesting features of Regions’ engagement program is that although it features the company’s top 25 shareholders it also includes several investors with much smaller holdings. ‘Their list of priority areas may be different and smaller [than investors with larger holdings] and they [may] really want to dig in deeply on one of those [environmental or social] topics that perhaps we've hit at a higher level with a larger shareholder that has a different perspective. Everybody has different pressure points, and we get a different focus from those smaller positions,’ Nix says.
In terms of the governance function at Regions, Nix refers to a quote from Phil Jackson, former coach of the Chicago Bulls: ‘The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.’
‘That really sums it up,’ Nix says. ‘We each have very specific and big obligations in our individual roles, but it all comes together and strengthens the overall output of the team. We've got a great culture here.’
The Governance Matters podcast from Governance Intelligence provides listeners with insight into cutting-edge issues of the day for corporate secretaries, general counsel and other governance professionals. The series looks at how the roles of governance professionals and the board – as well as the landscape in which they operate – are evolving.
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