Brendan Wood International (BWI) is pleased to announce the 2015/2016 results of its non-stop polling of the world’s most influential shareholders. BWI's 'voice of the shareholder' reporting measures 1400 corporations against 11 performance quality metrics. One of the most critical is shareholder confidence in each company's Board. The TopGun Board designation accredits the highest levels of confidence in a Board by major institutional investors who own or have the ability to own the stock in sizable stakes.

"Boards of Directors are critical to the trajectory of a corporation. The Board of Directors names and maintains the tenure of the CEO who implements a strategy that is also Board supported and sometimes even Board inspired. The Board can unify management’s marketing efforts by speaking with investors. This has become a critical part of the role. One of the main themes behind TopGun Board performance cited by investors is the Board’s ability to communicate their meaningful presence to share owners alongside the management," said Jordan Novak, Managing Director, Brendan Wood International.

The voting panel was comprised of over 500 investors and sell-side professionals, including the majority of TopGun equity investors, research analysts and sell-side sales professionals both in Canada and abroad. The panel considered some 323 potential nominees in Canada whose companies are listed on Brendan Wood International's Shareholder Confidence Index. Less than ten percent of potential candidates, a total of 27 Boards, were awarded TopGun status based on the number of votes received.

The Board of ARC Resources Ltd has been selected TopGun Board of the Year based upon total votes cast in its favour. "The Board of ARC Resources Ltd is consistently credited with making decisions with investors’ best interests in mind. The Board communicates a crystal clear and straightforward message to investors in good times and bad. ARC's CEO and Strategy are both consistently ranked TopGun calibre, as are the CFO and the Senior Management team. These are all indicators of a culture of over-performance. TopGun Companies generally have TopGun Boards. Another observation on TopGun Boards is that many include individual TopGun directors who earned the designation elsewhere as CEO's, Directors and/or investors," said Novak.