SEC Rulemaking Comment Tips: Action Needed SEC rulemaking comment tips repeated here are primarily based on advice from the Council of Institutional Investors. However, I am also including tips from the Sustainable, Responsible and Impact Investing, conference I attended in Colorado Springs in November. (Search #SRI30 for other Conference tidbits at CorpGov.net and on Twitter.) […]
2020 ESG Proposal Lists Updated Our 2020 ESG proposal lists have been updated, thank to Lynn Jokela (bio) who posted something the other day at TheCorporateCounsel.net about how to find “other companies who are receiving the same shareholder proposals.” Presumably Jokela was focused on corporate counsel. Of course, our readers, primarily investors, also want to know who […]
Shareholders target fund voting at BlackRock Inc., Vanguard, JPMorgan Chase, T. Rowe Price, and Northern Trust. (BlackRock, Vanguard Face Shareholder Rebuke Over Climate Votes, Bloomberg, 12/13/2019) With their rights under attack by the SEC, shareholders are beginning to realize how their investments are too often voted in corporate elections to concentrate power in self-serving corporate […]
Millennial socialists have not been overtly embraced by the SEC, but the Commission’s recent proposals to disempower proxy advisors and shareholders below the level of multi-millionaire’s plays into the hands of those advocating a socialist economy. The Commission’s proposed rules would further concentrate the power of corporate elites and reduce their accountability to “Main Street” […]
Guidewire Software 2019 annual meeting is December 17th. To enhance long-term value: Vote FOR #5 – Majority Voting for the Election of Directors; #4 Eliminate Classified Board. AGAINST director Michael Keller and the auditor. Unfortunately, the meeting is virtual-only, instead of hybrid, so shareholders cannot meet each other, the directors or management. The board/management can also […]
Stanford’s David F. Larcker and Brian Tayan have a new paper called Loosey-Goosey Governance: Four Misunderstood Terms in Corporate Governance in which they appear to think they’ve discovered what everyone has understood forever — that there are limits to structural solutions and that checklists of best practices are not especially helpful. We were very clear […]
The Costs and Benefits of Shareholder Democracy (download from SSRN) by Nickolay Gantchev and Mariassunta Giannetti was referenced several times in the SEC’s proposed rulemaking to “modernize” the shareholder proposal process by making corporations more of democratic-free. The research was also referenced by two SEC Commissioners at the meeting when the proposal was initially voted […]