SEC Backs Exxon Plan to Allow Auto Vote For Retail Investors (1)

Exxon Mobil Corp. is introducing a program to encourage more retail investors to support the company in proxy votes with an automatic system that threatens to limit the influence of activists.

The Securities and Exchange Commission waved through the plan on Monday by issuing a no-enforcement letter that effectively allows the company to proceed.

The novel program “aims to boost proxy voting by retail investors by enabling them to give a standing instruction to cast votes as recommended by the company’s board,” Davis Polk, the law firm that helped develop the system for Exxon, said in a statement.

Exxon ...