Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Burlington Stores, Inc. 2021 Annual Stockholders' Meeting. I would now like to introduce you to John Mahoney, Chairman of the Board of Burlington Stores. Mr. Mahoney, you may begin.
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders of Burlington Stores. I'm John Mahoney, the company's chair, and I'll be presiding over this meeting. At this time, I call the meeting to order. Before proceeding to the business of the meeting, I'd like to introduce you to the directors of the company in attendance, starting with our newest member, Michael Goodwin, who joined the board in December. In addition, the following directors are also in attendance: Ted English, Jordan Hitch, William McNamara, Michael O'Sullivan, Jessica Rodriguez, Laura Sen, Paul Sullivan, and Mary Ann Tocio. In addition to our directors, John Crimmins, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, David Glick, our Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer, Michael Allison, our new Chief Human Resources Officer, and Joyce Manning, our Executive Vice President of Human Resources, are also in attendance.
Michael will succeed Joyce, who is retiring at the end of the month after more than 11 years of service. We thank her for all of her contributions to Burlington, and we wish her all the best in retirement. Karen Leu , our General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, will act as Secretary at today's meeting. Chris Schaub, our Assistant General Counsel, is also in attendance, together with Christine Pino, a representative of American Stock Transfer & Trust Company, the company's transfer agent, who will serve as the Inspector of Elections and has provided us with her oath as the Inspector. It is also my pleasure to introduce to you Lauren Zangardi and Susie O'Mara from Deloitte & Touche. They'll be available to answer questions during the question and answer period at the end of the meeting. I'll now turn it over to Karen.
Thank you. We are conducting this meeting in accordance with our bylaws, and the meeting rules and agenda are available on the virtual meeting website. A copy of the Notice of Annual Meeting and proxy materials were made available to shareholders beginning on April 1, 2021, and we have received an affidavit of mailing to this effect from our transfer agent. These items will be incorporated into the minutes of today's meeting. The record date for voting at today's meeting was March 25, 2021. A list of the holders of record has been certified by our transfer agent and is available on the virtual meeting website. We are informed by the Inspector of Elections that a quorum is present, and the meeting is now duly convened. We will now turn to the formal business of the meeting.
After the formal meeting is adjourned, we will have members of management and the board available for any questions, which may be submitted on the virtual meeting website during the meeting. The polls are now open, and shareholders can vote online. The agenda for the meeting will be limited to the proposals set forth in the Notice and Proxy Statement, which I will now review. The first item on the agenda is the election of Michael Goodwin, Bill McNamara, Michael O'Sullivan, and Jessica Rodriguez as Class II Directors. The board unanimously recommends that stockholders vote for the election of each director. The second item is the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as the company's independent registered certified public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending January 29, 2022. The board and the audit committee unanimously recommend that stockholders vote for the ratification of Deloitte's appointment.
The third item is the non-binding advisory approval of the compensation of the company's named executive officers, commonly referred to as Say-on-Pay. The board unanimously recommends that stockholders vote for this advisory proposal. The final item is the proposal regarding the setting of target amounts for CEO compensation, as properly presented by Trillium Asset Management, LLC, on behalf of Nancy Jacobs, the Trillium ESG Small/Mid Cap Fund, Persephone, LLC, Plymouth Congregational Church, and Mayberry, LLC. We will now connect with Jonas Kron, Trillium's Chief Advocacy Officer, who will present the proposal. Mr. Kron, we would ask you to keep your remarks related to the proposal to three minutes. Operator, please open the line for Mr. Kron at this time.
His line is open.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, fellow shareholders. My name is Jonas Kron, and I'm here on behalf of Trillium Asset Management and the filers of the proposal to hereby move proposal number four, requesting that the Executive Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors take into consideration the pay grades and/or salary ranges of all classifications of company employees when setting target amounts for CEO compensation.
We know that Burlington recognizes the importance of employee pay in its 2020 Annual Report, which states, "Failing to increase our wages or benefits competitively or reducing our wages or benefits could result in the decline in our ability to attract or retain employees on the quality of our workforce, causing our customer service or performance to suffer, which could negatively impact our results." So we are therefore surprised that Burlington's compensation discussion and analysis in the proxy actually contains no discussion at all of worker wages. However, proposal number four, we believe, offers a solution to this situation and provides Burlington investors an opportunity to convey their concerns about executive and worker compensation.
On April 23, 2020, the International Corporate Governance Network, a group of investors representing over $54 trillion in assets, published a letter on this subject stating that, "Executive pay policy should reflect the experience of the overall workforce." It goes on and discusses remuneration policies, which it says, "Should seek an equitable treatment of ordinary staff with that of senior executive management." We completely agree. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed many concerning aspects of business as usual in the United States. One of them is the precarious economic conditions that many working Americans live in every day. We believe that this is an opportunity for Burlington to show investors, its customers, its impacted communities, and its associates, 75% of whom are self-identified as female and 71% of whom self-identify as a racial or ethnic minority, that it will give these issues the attention they deserve.
Thank you very much for your time and attention, and we urge your support for proposal number four. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Kron, for sharing your remarks. As noted in our proxy statement, the board has recommended that stockholders vote against this proposal for the reasons that we describe in the proxy statement. We have now covered each of the proposals. Operator, if you could return Mr. Kron to the listen-only line, and we will proceed and conclude our meeting. The next step is the results of voting. We will now move on to voting. I now declare the polls closed. The inspector has collected and tabulated the ballots. I will now report the preliminary voting results. Regarding the election of directors, 99.97% of the shares voted for Mr. Goodwin, 99.34% of the shares voted for Mr. McNamara, 99.98% of the shares voted for Mr. O'Sullivan, and 99.33% of the shares voted for Ms. Rodriguez.
97.43% of the outstanding shares have voted to ratify the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as our independent auditors. 96.66% of the outstanding shares have voted in favor of the Say-on-Pay proposal. 9.53% of the outstanding shares have voted in favor of the proposal regarding the setting of target amounts for CEO compensation. Final voting results will be reported in a Form 8-K filing with the SEC within four business days. That concludes my report, and I will turn it over to the chair.
Thank you for attending today's meeting. The meeting is adjourned. We are happy to address any questions from shareholders of record attending today. Karen, have we received any questions?
No questions have been submitted.
Thank you. As there are no further questions, our program for the day has concluded. Thank you all for attending today's meeting and for your continuing support of the company.
This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.