Building and managing long-term relationships based on mutual trust is vital to our strategy for corporate governance. Shareholders, who invest in our company and elect the board of directors, are entitled to meaningful information about the company's business, policies and practices so they can make informed decisions and knowledgeably participate in the proxy voting process.
We hope to foster more open dialogue with shareholders by offering a variety of avenues for shareholders to communicate with the Board and encouraging shareholders to contact us at any time of year. Our shareholders are able to communicate their thoughts or concerns related to executive compensation directly to the Compensation Committee via our online Executive Compensation Feedback form. Shareholders and other interested parties may communicate with the Board by letter or email. We have also received nearly 8,000 personal comments from our registered shareholders over the past three proxy seasons.
Embracing the concept that greater transparency can lead to better understanding and more informed engagement with our shareholders, we offer the following materials to best serve our shareholders:
- Our Letter to Shareholders is signed by each member of the Board and clearly explains the Board's actions in shareholders' behalf during the past year.
- In direct response to shareholder feedback, we designed user-friendly charts and graphics in our Proxy Statement that highlight our efforts in sustainability, corporate citizenship, and shareholder engagement. We also included a chart that summarizes each Director's skills and experience, and we provided more detail in the Directors' biographies.
- Our Proxy Statement now includes a Summary Information section which provides key data relating to business performance, executive compensation, and shareholder actions. These issues are also addressed at length in the Proxy.
- In addition, we have implemented a philosophy promoting greater communication with our institutional investors on corporate governance issues.
To encourage greater shareholder participation in voting, we offered each individual shareholder who votes an eco-friendly tote bag or a tree planted in the shareholder's name. This innovation has increased voting and has had the added benefit of underscoring to our shareholders our commitment to sustainability.
Prudential’s 2011 Sustainability Report