ISS (RiskMetrics)
ISS is part of Wharton Research Data Service (WRDS). You can find WRDS in the list of financial
databases on the website of the EDSC. To get access to WRDS - ISS (Formerly RiskMetrics) you
need a VPN-connection or get access via EZproxy. WRDS also asks for your email address, this has
to be your ERNA email address. WRDS sends a link to this email address; this link is valid for 14
days. After 14 days you can request a new link.
ISS offers two parts: Directors and Governance.
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Directors provides data on directors other than their financial compensation, like board
affiliation. The Directors database covers firms included in S&P500, S&PMidCaps and S&P
SmallCaps (so US companies).
Governance provides data on whether companies had undertaken certain governance tactics
in a specific year, for example poison pills. The Governance database covers firms included
in the S&P 1500 index (so US companies).
Regarding the concept of CEO Data, only the Directors part is relevant for this manual. Nonetheless,
this manual is also useful if you want governance data, since both parts work in a similar way.
The Directors (and Governance) part is divided in two sub-parts: Directors and Directors Legacy.
Both sub-parts are highly similar, except that Directors starts in 2007, while Directors Legacy ends in
2006. This is cause by a change in methodology to collect data in 2007.
In Directors Legacy, you can download data after following these four steps:
Step 1: What date range do you want to use?
Choose the time window for which you want information on by using the dropdown menus. The data
goes back to 1996. If your preferred time window begins before 2006 and ends after 2007 you need
to download your data twice: one time in Directors and one time in Directors Legacy.
Step 2: How would you like to search this dataset?
Determine which companies you want to have in your dataset. There are three ways to find
companies.
1. The first way is manually entering the company codes. If you do not know the codes by heart
you can look them up by using the Code Lookup Link. After your search criterion has
provided the results you can select the relevant companies and pick one identifier. After this,
click on "Add checked codes to your code list". If necessary, you can look for more
companies after this in the same way and put them also in the list. Make sure you always pick
the same identifier! When you have entered all the companies in the list click on "Insert List
in Query" to automatically enter all the identifiers in the typing field. You also can choose to
download the codes in a file (Download as text) so you can upload this file for example in
Execucomp later at any time you want. To do this, click on "Save List to File".
2. Uploading a file containing company codes is thus the second way to find companies in ISS.
For example, if you have a list of TICKER codes you can upload this file in ISS. In this case,
make sure to select TICKER in the menu above. WRDS only accepts notepad files (.txt
formats)!
3. The last option is searching the entire database. This option may take some time to download
all the data.
Identifiers used for upload in ISS - Directors: tickers and 9-digit Cusips
Identifiers used for upload in ISS - Directors Legacy: tickers and 6-digit Cusips
Step 3: What variables do you want in your query?
Choose the relevant variables. The block Company Information provides the name, the fiscal year
and some identifiers of the company. The block Director Information provides generic data on the
directors like name, gender, age, years of service and country of employment. The block Other
Director Information provides more specific data on the directors, usually in the form of
dummyvariables. Dummyvariables indicate whether or not a certain condition is present or not. For
example, it provides whether or not a director has board affilition or whether or not a director was
present at at least 75% of the board meetings. Also data like ethnic background and (in)dependency
can be downloaded here.
Step 4: How would you like the query output?
In which format you want to have your output? For example, choose .xlsx if you want an Excel file.
Click on Submit to download the data.