Synopsis of the 2025 Banff Capital Markets Roundtable

This publication is a structured synopsis of the 2025 Banff Capital Markets Roundtable rather than a traditional research paper with a single thesis. Its purpose is to capture the main areas of agreement and disagreement among Canadian capital-markets scholars who met to discuss shareholder voting and corporate governance. The discussion centred on four linked topics: shareholder democracy in the modern age, the role of proxy advisors, shareholder voting in proxy fights, and socially directed voting on issues beyond straightforward shareholder returns.

The synopsis highlights several tensions running through those discussions. It questions whether the language of "shareholder democracy" is conceptually helpful, given the differences between political democracy and corporate governance. It also reports substantial debate over whether more shareholder influence improves Canadian capital markets, whether proxy advisors and large institutional investors are solving or worsening governance problems, and how to judge socially motivated voting such as ESG-oriented activism. In effect, the paper maps the contested terrain rather than resolving it, which is what makes it useful as a policy and governance overview.