Rule 14a-8: Perhaps There’s Another Way, Sarah Wilson’s post on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, is the most constructive response yet to the SEC’s proposed Rule 14a-8 rescission. Most of the debate has been a binary choice: keep the rule as it is, or scrap it. Wilson offers a third path. I […]
Employees owning 3–20% of a public company isn’t a feel‑good fringe idea—it’s one of the most underused tools we have to boost performance and democratize capitalism. Across the best empirical studies of U.S. public firms, small but meaningful employee ownership stakes and broad‑based stock options are associated with higher valuations and, in many cases, better […]
Letter to SEC-IAC The following was sent to the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee (Committee) earlier today. I’ve reformatted it slightly for ease of posting, and added my own comments at the end, after the letter that was sent, and a graphic at the top. Video (more…)
NeevaAI is another option for harnessing the power of the web through AI. ChatGPT gives me a constant busy signal. Plus, NeevaAI may actually have some advantages. Tired of our Alphabet/Google overlords, I have been trying out neevia search for a while and like it. CorpGov.net’s days of ranking #1-5 in any search for corporate governance […]
ESG via UPC may be the next field of play for those interested in corporate governance reform. Corporate Accountability Forums will host a discussion with proxy advisor John Glenn Grau and activist investor Michael Levin on December 1, 2022, at noon Eastern time. How do new universal proxy card (UPC) rules make it easier for […]
Amazon Plays April Fools Joke with shareholders. I am not laughing. Amazon’s preliminary proxy of April 1 fails to include my proposal and others where Amazon filed no-action requests with the SEC. My proposal is aimed at disclosing the Company’s distribution of stock-based incentives throughout the workforce as a first step in addressing wealth inequality. Failing to disclose pending proposals that […]
Incentive shares – shareholders have a right to know their distribution. Meta, Amazon, and Repligen argue against disclosure. Working mostly from the same template, they argue distribution of shares to employees is “ordinary business” and “does not focus on any significant policy issue that transcends the company’s ordinary business operations.” I submitted similar proposals to […]
Sharing Profits is Not Enough Professor Reich but you are getting warmer. Your hook was that Sears workers owned 25%. Then you imagine what that magnitude of ownership could mean at Amazon. The spoiler was you then began touting cash bonuses, rather than stocks. True, having ALL retirement tied to one stock is risky. That […]
SHARE Summit 2021 was a virtual event this year. I missed the sidebar conversations so important at most conferences. Additionally, since I was home and had plenty of work to do, I attended fewer sessions than I would have in Vancouver. Still, even when virtual, this annual conference is among the best. I cannot think […]
SHARE Investor Summit 2021, register. This will be a fantastic virtual event, February 16-19, 2021. Against the backdrop of the social and economic impacts of COVID-19, escalating wealth inequality, systemic racism, and the continuing climate crisis, we rise to the challenge. The SHARE Investor Summit 2021 brings together investment decision-makers and leaders to identify ways of […]
I posted one of several responses to the following question on Quora: Do you find investing in the stock market a good investment strategy or a scam? I thought my blog readers may also be interested in what I posted to Quora. Here it is with minor changes. (more…)
A Gender Pay Scorecard released by Arjuna Capital f0r Equal Pay Day finds only Citigroup earning an “A” grade, while 23 of 46 large companies evaluated got failing grades of “F.” (more…)
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) operates as an online retailer in North America and internationally. It is one of the stocks in my portfolio. Their annual meeting is coming up on 6/10/2015. ProxyDemocracy.org had the vote of four funds when I checked and voted on 6/3/2015. I voted with management 60% of the time and assigned Amazon a proxy score of 60. (more…)
My wife and I don’t have the resources to or stock holdings to allow us to file 75 proxy access shareholder proposals, like New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer’s Boardroom Accountability Project. However, I have been writing about proxy access for 20 years and, together with Les Greenberg, filed the petition in 2002 with the […]
Amazon.com (AMZN), is one of the stocks in my portfolio. Their annual meeting is coming up on 5/21/2014. ProxyDemocracy.org had collected the votes of four funds when I checked and voted on 5/15/2014. I voted with management % of the time. View Proxy Statement. All that talent at AMZN and they didn’t even bother to provide a linked table of contents. […]
On January 14th I attended another great event at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance. It was a dialogue between Professor Dan Siciliano, Faculty Director of the Rock Center and Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. There was plenty of opportunity for audience participation… many getting in two questions. […]
Amazon.com, Inc. ($AMZN) is one of the stocks in my portfolio. Their annual meeting is coming up on 5/23/2013. ProxyDemocracy.org had collected the votes of three funds when I checked on 5/16/2013. I voted with management 64% of the time. View Proxy Statement (high tech AMZN but no hyperlinked index). Warning: Be sure to vote each item on the proxy. Any items left […]
This is Part 2 of a post which started out reviewing the important thesis outlined in The Agency Costs of Agency Capitalism: Activist Investors and the Revaluation of Governance Rights by Ronald J. Gilson and Jeffrey N. Gordon (January 1, 2013). See Agency Capitalism: Corrective Measures Part 1 and Part 3. Current law encourages mindless indexing of portfolios and voting like lemmings […]