Exercise of voting rights

Alvoso Pension Fund invests most of its equity holdings in passive, collective investment vehicles for institutional investors. Credit Suisse Asset Management (Switzerland) Ltd. (CSAM), the asset manager of Alvoso Pension Fund, actively observes shareholder rights in a fiduciary capacity at annual general meetings in its role as a global and responsible asset manager.

CSAM has significant holdings on behalf of clients, which it manages in the context of its funds and other solutions. This enables CSAM to influence relevant decision makers, either through conversations and ongoing dialogue at the highest level or through the exercise of voting rights on behalf of clients at annual general meetings.

CSAM works with Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS), its experienced, external partner for proxy voting. CSAM commissions ISS as representative with the exercise of voting rights at annual general meetings in Switzerland, Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region. CSAM forwards the voting preferences to the management company, which has a voting rights committee of three members. The committee actually exercises the voting rights. The exercise of voting rights is disclosed after the annual general meeting on the CSAM regulatory website.

Voting rights are exercised as a rule once a certain materiality threshold has been crossed. The definition of materiality includes both actively and passively managed collective investment vehicles.