In 1953 the New York Stock Exchange launched “Own Your Share of American Business,” the longest marketing campaign in its history. As Janice Traflet documents in A Nation of Small Shareholders: Marketing Wall Street after World War II (see my review essay), the campaign had two purposes. It would restore profits to retail brokerage, and […]
The Rhetoric and Reality of Shareholder Democracy was submitted by Jang-Sup Shin for publication in response to my post Predatory Value Extraction, a review of the book of that title by Professors Shin and Lazonick. Comments on The Rhetoric and Reality of Shareholder Democracy are invited in the box below. (more…)
The November 15 SEC Roundtable on the Proxy Process will include me on the SEC Shareholder Proposal Panel. Public announcement with instructions for submitting comments. I will only have a few minutes at the Roundtable. What should I emphasize? Where should I stay in DC? Take Action: Readers of CorpGov.net know far more than I do. Please email your suggestions […]
The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon by David Webber is sure to get readers thinking (purchase). For far too long, labor and its progressive sympathizers have sought to transform the market from outside the market: from courts, from legislatures, from regulators, from street protests, from strikes. These tools are important. But […]
A Nation of Small Shareholders: Marketing Wall Street after World War II (Studies in Industry and Society) by Janice M. Traflet (link to buy) explains how an ad campaign began to transform American finance. With all the current focus on Main Street investors, A Nation of Small Shareholders could be revisited and transformed to include […]
With activist investor Nelson Peltz of Trian Partners making an intense and expensive play for a seat on the board of troubled Proctor & Gamble, the past six months have witnessed the largest proxy battle, and perhaps the oddest one, in U.S. history. In October, it appeared to be over, as the relieved P&G management […]