2024 Silicon Valley 150 Corporate Governance Report

Posted by Richard Blake, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, on Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Editor's Note:

Richard Blake is a Partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. This post is based on a WSGR memorandum by Mr. Blake, David Thomas, Jason Chan, Courtney Mathes, Barbara Novak, and Katherine O’Neal.

Below are the key findings from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati’s 2024 Silicon Valley 150 Corporate Governance Report, which analyzes the corporate governance practices and disclosures of the Valley’s largest public companies based on reviews of proxy statements filed between October 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024 (referred to as 2024 in this report), as well as corresponding annual meetings and related documents

• Virtual meetings are here to stay. Following the practice started during the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately 89% of the SV150 opted to hold a virtual meeting in 2024 rather than a physical one.
• ESG/CSR disclosure in the proxy statement and on websites continued to remain strong throughout the SV150, with 83% of the top 100 companies having such disclosure in their proxies and 92% of the top 100 companies having such disclosure on their website.
• Over three-quarters of the SV150 companies published an ESG Report on their website, with 98% of the top 50 companies doing so. Most of the companies that issued an ESG Report (80.3%) issued a single report rather than multiple reports. Nearly 50% of the ESG Reports contained an independent, third-party assurance of some of the data.
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