State Street adds proxy voting choice to S&P 500 UCITS ETF
Proxy voting choice comes to SPYL, State Street's S&P 500 UCITS ETF.
State Street is offering proxy voting choice to investors in SPYL, its S&P 500 UCITS ETF. The fund's accumulating share class tracks a float-adjusted, capitalisation-weighted index of the 500 largest US companies. The index universe spans more than 24 industry groups. Those companies account for roughly 75% of the US equity market.
The notice appears on the SSGA SPDR Insights product page, alongside a 'Learn More' link. The page doesn't describe the voting mechanics. It says nothing about how ballots would be cast, whether the option extends to every holder, or what the pass-through mechanism looks like.
Proxy choice for a passive fund
For a passive index issuer, voting choice is a way to stand apart on governance. The mechanics, though, are missing. That makes the pitch hard to evaluate. Whether SPYL investors will actually use the ballots is an open question.