Connolly

Institutional Shareholder Services, the proxy voting recommendation service used by more than 700 institutional investors, recently named John Connolly its new CEO. Connolly replaces the shareholder advocate Jamie Heard, who started his career at the Investor Responsibility Research Center and has been called one of Wall Street's least-known powerbrokers. Connolly, however, is not known as a governance expert or shareholder activist. He founded Course Technology, a technology publisher acquired by Thomson Financial, and later founded IT consulting firm Mainspring, which was acquired by IBM in 2001. Industry watchers expect Connolly to focus on strategic and international growth issues, leaving proxy and voting decisions to SVP Pat McGurn and Heard, who will remain ISS vice chairman.