South Korea's state-run pension fund actively exercised its voting rights this year opposing one out of 10 proposals at shareholders meeting, data showed Wednesday.
The National Pension Service (NPS), the operator of the fund, voted against 320, or 9.6 percent, out of 3,344 resolutions made this year at shareholders meetings of the companies it has invested in, according to the data compiled by industry tracker CEO Score.
The tally was based on the votes the NPS took part in at 654 shareholders meetings at 586 companies.
The fund had been casting more opposing votes in the past few years, accounting for 6.6 percent in 2009, 8.1 percent in 2010 and
7.0 percent in 2011. In 2012, the comparable figure was 17 percent but fell to 10.8 percent in 2013, earlier data showed. Last year, the figure stood at some 10 percent as well.
The dissenting votes were mostly on dividend payment and the re-election of executives as board members and auditors, according to the data.
Also, the NPS' dissenting vote rate at the country's top 10 conglomerates remained relatively low at 7.5 percent, the data showed.
The NPS is South Korea's largest institutional investor and holds a major stake in many blue chip Korean companies.
The fund operator has been increasingly under pressure to help rein in malpractices at major firms it invests in, and its role increased in voting against the re-election of chiefs of family-run conglomerates to company boards.
The Park Geun-hye administration has been seeking to overhaul the corporate governance structure and stressed the need to bolster the national pension fund's voting rights.
The NPS' investment reached 511 trillion won ($437 billion) at the end of last year. The figure includes 94.9 trillion won worth of local stocks, 69.9 trillion won for overseas stocks and 268.6 trillion won in domestic bonds. (Yonhap)
