Securities lending and votes

Many funds lend part of their holdings to other market participants and earn a fee that goes back to the fund. While shares are on loan the borrower holds the voting right. If the shares are still out on the record date for a meeting, the fund cannot vote them unless it recalls the loan in time.

What the form asks

Since 2024, Form N-PX asks for two numbers beside every vote: the shares voted, and the shares the filer had on loan and did not recall. The second number makes the trade-off between lending income and voting visible for the first time.

For the year to 30 June 2026, filers reported 465.91 billion shares on loan against 14.45 trillion shares voted, summed over all their records: 3.12% of the two together. The median fund registrant reported 0.00%.

How this site shows it

Filer and family pages show shares on loan as a share of shares voted plus shares on loan, next to the median filer of the same kind. The figure sums across records, so one share lent over several meetings is counted at each. It describes how much of a filer's potential vote went uncast because of lending; it is not a measure of lending income or of the size of a lending programme.

Reading it with care

• A zero can mean no lending, a policy of recalling before every record date, or a filer that left the field empty.
• Index funds with broad lending programmes tend to show higher figures than concentrated funds.
• Lending is lawful and routine, and the form does not ask why a loan was or was not recalled.