Howard D. Sherman

The IRRC Institute for Corporate Responsibility provides independent issues-based research.

International Corporate Governance Network promotes standards of corporate governance to markets and economies world-wide. The company was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

GMI was formed in April 2000 by a small group of people who recognized the need for a new, easy-to-use tool to monitor corporate governance. Its premise is straightforward: companies that emphasize corporate governance and transparency will, over time, generate superior returns and economic performance and lower their cost of capital. The opposite is also true: companies weak in corporate governance and transparency represent increased investment risks and result in a higher cost of capital. Events of the last few years, including those at Enron, Worldcom, and others, support this thesis, as does a growing body of academic research and financial market surveys. And while the spotlight started with U.S. companies, this is not just a U.S. problem. Similar corporate debacles have occurred recently in Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea and The Netherlands, to mention a few. The problem for investors is how to measure governance practices across a large universe of companies, irrespective of domicile, in a cost-efficient way. While companies with weak governance structures and practices are the subjects of newspaper headlines, there are as many companies with outstanding governance policies and disclosure levels that go unrecognized. GMI's ratings hope to correct that. Subscribers to its service receive an independent and dispassionate evaluation of the governance characteristics of each company in its research universe. Its rating model has been developed following extensive research in multiple markets and consultations with institutional investors, corporate officers and directors and governance specialists and is updated annually. Its scoring algorithm has also been tested and validated by outside statistical experts and is patent pending. GMI Ratings for 4,233 companies, including complete coverage of the MSCI World and MSCI EAFE Index, are now available on a subscription basis. Subscriptions include two logins and are based on geographic region, as follows: - North American coverage includes complete coverage for companies in the TSX 60 (Canada), S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, S&P SmallCap 600 and Russell 1000 Index. - Industrialized Asia-Pacific includes coverage of the S&P/ASX 100 (Australia and New Zealand), S&P/ASX 200 (Australia and New Zealand), Hang Seng (Hong Kong), Nikkei 225 (Japan) and STI (Singapore) Index. - Industrialized Europe includes a total of 1018 companies, including complete coverage of the following market indices: BEL 20 (Belgium), CAC 40 (France), DAX (Germany), ATHEX 20 (Greece), AEX (Netherlands), IBEX 35 (Spain), OMX (Sweden) SMI (Switzerland), FTSE 350 (UK) and the Dow Jones STOXX 600, plus coverage for additional companies in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Portugal. - Emerging Markets covered by GMI include a total of 555 companies from 22 countries: China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand (EM - Asia); Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Turkey (EM - Europe); Egypt, Israel, Morocco and South Africa (EM - Middle East and Africa); and Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru (EM - Latin America). GMI's emerging market coverage includes those MSCI Emerging Market Index companies with a free float market capitalization of at least $1 billion. GMI subscriptions are also available at the country level (e.g. France-only). For smaller investors and analysts who need coverage for a limited range of securities, GMI offers customized portfolio coverage. Customized coverage is based on a minimum of 15 companies and can include any company from any region, market sector or industry that has been rated by GMI. For corporations, advisory firms, security analysts and others whose interests are geared to specific types of businesses rather than geographic region, GMI offers market sector-based subscriptions. Available sectors include: Automobiles & Parts, Banks, Basic Resources, Chemicals, Construction & Materials, Financial Services, Food & Beverage, Healthcare, Industrial Goods & Services, Insurance, Media, Oil & Gas, Personal & Household Goods, Real Estate, Retail, Technology, Telecommunications, Travel & Leisure and Utilities. GMI also offers subscriptions for 41 specific industry groups within these sectors. Please contact GMI for a list of available industry groups. All subscribers are able to hone their analysis by using GMI's filtering tools to isolate ratings for all companies within specific industry groups for a selected country, index, region or globally. Subscribers also receive regular updates on corporate governance developments at each company rated by GMI allowing them to track changes, both positive and negative, at GMI-rated companies in a single location.

Governance Holdings Co. provides online research and ratings on environmental, social and governance and accounting-related risks affecting the performance of public companies. The company was on July 15, 2010 and is headquartered in New York, NY.

Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc. (ISS) is an investment research firm headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. The firm was founded in 1985 and is owned by Viss Intermediate LLC, which is ultimately held by Deutsche Börse AG (ETR: DB1) in Germany. ISS provides corporate governance and responsible investment solutions globally to other investment advisers, including investment advisers to investment companies, pension and profit-sharing plans, broker-dealers, asset owners, asset managers, banks or thrift institutions, hedge funds, trusts, estates, charitable organizations and other institutional investors, as well as law firms, and universities. The firm also provides data to third parties for use in thematic based indices. Their solutions include objective governance research and recommendations; responsible investment data, analytics, and research; end-to-end proxy voting and distribution solutions; turnkey securities class-action claims management provided by Securities Class Action Services, LLC (ISS SCAS); reliable global governance data and modeling tools; asset management intelligence, portfolio execution and monitoring, fund services, and media.