December 12, 2019
Vanessa Countryman, Secretary Securities and Exchange Commission 100 F Street, NE Washington, DC 20549-0609 Re: File Number S7-22-19 December 12, 2019 Dear Ms. Countryman, Now that the SEC is contemplating changes to the proxy rules in order to shore up retirement stability, I’d like to take a moment to encourage you in this pursuit. I’m sure you will hear from others who want their retirement growth untouched by unelected financial bureaucrats (and rightly so) and I hope you will reform the rules to reflect who the system should work for. Hint: It’s the investors, not the proxy advisory firms. I rely on my retirement funds. Not in theory, not in the future, but right now, as a retiree. I worked hard to plan ahead and my husband and I made sacrifices during our working lives to be able to live comfortably in our retirement years. Being self-employed was a lot of hard work, and it was worth every moment. I worked my fingers to the bone to make my career a success and I just do not believe there’s any call to allow proxy firms that are buddy-buddy with Wall Street heavyweights to pull the rug out from under honest investors like me and others in this same position. Proxies are fine. Fund managers accepting vote recommendations from proxies is fine. Free rein for proxies to mess with pensions and retirement investments while fund managers sign on with no questions asked is not fine. Prioritizing special interests and a social justice warrior agenda that appeals to a minority over maximizing returns for all is not fine. I ran a business for many years and I know that running a large federal agency like the SEC is nothing to sneeze at. You recognize that the stakes are high here, as do the investors who are submitting comments on this issue. Thank you for your work on this. Sincerely, Nansen Malin Seaview, WA