Good morning, and welcome to the Loews Corporation twenty twenty one Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I will now turn the meeting over to Jim Tisch, Chief Executive Officer of Loews Corporation.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Jim Fish, Chief Executive Officer of Lowe's Corporation. On behalf of the Board of Directors of the company, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the twenty twenty one Annual Meeting of Shareholders, which we are holding virtually again this year due to the COVID-nineteen pandemic. A few things to note before we begin the meeting. We will be following the agenda posted on the meeting site.
We will first conduct the formal part of the meeting by acting on the agenda items and then after the meeting has officially adjourned, turn to a question and answer session where we will address questions from our shareholders. The shares owned by shareholders who have sent in their proxies will be voted by a ballot cast by the proxy committee named in the proxy. If you have already submitted a proxy, it is not necessary for you to vote at the meeting. If you wish to vote at the meeting, you may do so by clicking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. Shareholders may submit questions now and at any time during the meeting in the space provided on the meeting platform.
We ask that questions cover only one topic per question In the interest of ensuring that our meeting provides as many shareholders as possible with an opportunity to have their questions addressed, we intend to respond to questions only during the Q and A session at the end. Please observe the rules of conduct posted on the meeting site. Before we proceed, I would like to introduce the other members of your Board present at this meeting, Ann Berman, Joe Bauer, Chuck Davidson, Chuck Dijker, Paul Friedborg, Walter Harris, Susan Peters, Phil Askewey, Andrew Tisch, Jonathan Tisch and Tony Welters. And now to the business of the meeting. We have received proxies representing more than 94% of our outstanding shares.
Accordingly, there is a quorum present. Greg Denman, who is a representative of Carl Heidberg and Associates, has been appointed to serve as Inspector of Election during the meeting. We will first introduce all of the proposals. After we introduce the proposals, I will declare the polls closed. We will then review the preliminary report of the Inspector of Election of each of the proposals, after which the official meeting will be adjourned.
We will then move on to the Q and A session. The first proposal is the election of directors. You have seen the proxy statement listing the slate of nominees for elections as directors. Each nominee is presently serving as a director of the company. The second proposal is the advisory vote on executive compensation.
The third proposal is the ratification of the appointment of the auditors. Eileen Crowley and Marissa Dalligan of the firm of Deloitte and Touche are present at the meeting today. The fourth proposal is the shareholder proposal relating to certain political contributions disclosures. Ms. Molly Bettourne of Clean Yield Asset Management, the shareholder proponent is on the line and will introduce the proposal.
Over to you Ms. Bettourne.
Thank you very much. Good morning, Chairman, Board of Directors, and my fellow shareholders. My name is Molly Bettorney, and I submit the following statement on behalf of my firm and the filer of this proposal, Green Yield Asset Management. Our proposal, item number four on the ballot, calls on Lowe's Corporation to fully disclose the extent of its political spending. Corporate political spending is a controversial activity that must be carefully managed and overseen at the most senior levels of management.
Mismanagement or misjudgment around political contributions can bring reputational damage, political risk, and legal consequences. The corporate fallout related to the January and the emergence of voter suppression laws underscore that the risks associated with corporate political involvement have never been higher. In recent years and even in recent months, scores of companies have strengthened their disclosure and oversight of political contributions. Best practices in this area include full disclosure of direct and indirect political contributions, descriptions of policies and procedures to ensure full legal compliance, a commitment to board oversight, and a commitment to assure alignment between corporate values and political contributions. We do acknowledge that Loews has increased its disclosure, but the company's policy still lacks many important areas.
The new policy will only marginally improve Loews' score on the leading rating system for corporate political disclosure in the CPA Zieglin Index. In contrast, more than half of the S and P 500 disclose a detailed policy governing political expenditures, and peers such as AIG, Hartford, Unum are among the top performers in this index. Loews is a laggard on this issue. We are asking Loews to disclose all of its corporate political spending, including that of its subsidiaries, particularly CNA Financial, so that shareholders and our board can appropriately evaluate and mitigate potential risks. Fellow shareholders, as you know, our company is a large and complicated enterprise at a time when the trend among large companies is to be more open about their political spending.
Our company is increasingly lagging on this important issue. It doesn't behoove or benefit Lowe's to be secretive with nothing to hide. If you agree, we we ask that you please vote in favor of proposal number four. Thank you very much.
Thank you, miss Bitourne. The company's response is set forth in our proxy statement. The polls will close in fifteen seconds, so this is your last chance to vote. We'll now give you, some time to cast your vote. Okay.
I will now declare the polls closed. We have the preliminary report of the inspector of election on the election of directors. At least 201,000,000 votes have been cast for the election of each of the nominees named in the proxy statement, which is the majority of the votes cast with respect to each nominee, all of whom I hereby declare to be duly elected as directors of the company. We also have the preliminary reports of the inspector on the advisory vote on executive compensation and the ratification of the appointment of auditors. At least two twenty five million votes, which is more than 92% of the votes cast, have been cast in favor of each of these proposals.
Therefore, of these proposals has been approved. Finally, we have the preliminary report of the inspector on the shareholder proposal requesting certain political contributions disclosures. At least 167,000,000 votes, which is more than 68% of the votes cast, have been cast against this proposal. Therefore, this proposal is defeated. The inspector of election will continue with his definitive count of the exact number of votes and will deliver his certificates of the results to the secretary to be filed with the minutes of this meeting.
We will report the final results of the voting on a Form eight ks filed with the SEC after the meeting. This concludes the business of the meeting. I will now declare the meeting officially adjourned. And we will now have a Q and A session, which we will address questions that we have received from our shareholders through the virtual meeting platform. Mary Skafidas, our Vice President, Investor Relations will relay those questions.
Mary, over to you.
Thank you, Jim. Before we turn to the questions, as a reminder, to allow us to answer questions from as many shareholders as possible, the rules of conduct limit each shareholder to two questions. In addition, we may summarize questions and aggregate questions received on the same topic. If you do not get if we do not get to your question before we run out of time, please feel free to reach out to our investor relations group. Our contact information is available on our website, and we would be happy to answer any of your questions.
So, Jim, a lot of interest on Lowe's Hotels, which has been the subsidiary hardest hit by the pandemic. Can you please give us an update on Lowe's Hotels?
Sure. So at the start of 2020, we had great expectations for our hotel business. However, reality couldn't have been further from what we had envisioned. Lowe's hotels had done a terrific job of managing through a very difficult situation during the pandemic. As travel picks up across the country, we are now just starting to see gradual progress at Lowe's hotels, especially at the company's resort destinations.
By the end of the 2021 of this year, 23 of our 27 hotels were open. And in further good news, the company expects to have hotels open in all of our markets by the end of the second quarter. In fact, the Regency Hotel in New York is opening up tomorrow, so make your reservations. As we compare the 2021 to the 2020, we've seen continued improvement in the trends. The average daily room rate for our owned and JV hotels that are open has increased by 25% to $234 a night.
For '21, we currently expect absent any divestitures or development projects to make a net cash contribution to Lowe's hotels from Lowe's Corp of about $80,000,000 This is down materially from our earlier estimates given the better operating environment and the anticipated cash flows at Lowe's hotels. As I think a lot of you know, Lowe's hotels has an ownership interest in nearly 15,000 rooms. Approximately 11,000 of those rooms are located in resort destinations. So we think that Lowe's hotels is well positioned to benefit from this leisure led recovery. And while we expect that circumstances will vary by hotel occupancy at hotels should gradually improve as the economy recovers from the pandemic, which I hope will be very, very soon.
Thank you, Jim. Next question has to do with Altium and Lowe's recent announcement of the sale of 47% of Altium to GIC. Shareholder asks that, you know, Lowe's often says that it's, hard to find a new subsidiary to invest in. Can Jim, can you tell us why Lowe's decided to sell a piece of Altium?
So there are a of reasons that we've decided to sell a piece of Altium, especially from what what I would call a portfolio optimization standpoint, that we felt that the time was right for us to monetize a portion of our ownership. Whenever we acquire a new subsidiary, our goal is to have a return of capital to Lowe's when we feel the time is right. And through Altium's dividend recap that occurred in February 2021, so just three months ago, and the sale of a 47% interest of company to GIC, the Singapore Wealth Fund, we've recouped our entire investment in Altium. So we still own 53% of the company, and we're still able to participate in the company's future. And basically, we have no money invested.
We fully believe in the company's long term prospects, and we think the management team at Altium is truly top notch in their industry. We've also added a strong partner in GIC, and the new ownership structure provides us, provides financial flexibility for Altium, especially if they seek to, pursue larger acquisitions.
Thank you, Jim. That concludes our q and a session. I'm gonna hand the meeting back over to you. Jim?
Oh, you know? Oh, yes. I guess that's the end of the year. Here we go. That concludes our meeting today.
Thank you for attending. We appreciate your support as our shareholders.