Fair elections have long been a major concern. When I started CorpGov.net in 1995, most directors were probably chosen by CEOs. Elections resembled those of North Korea. Vote for management’s slate or withhold your vote. Fair elections? I didn’t think so. My friends toiled mostly in socially responsible investments, focused on double bottom line impacts and […]
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 […]
Amazon 2018 annual meeting is May 30th. View proxy. I do not have time to go through my usual voting rationale. I am too busy with companies where I have a proposal. However, I want to bring to your attention a very important proposal from Bruce Herbert at Newground Social Investments, starting at page 18. […]
$COST, Costco Wholesale Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates membership warehouses. It offers branded and private-label products in a range of merchandise categories. $COST has supermajority vote requirements (66.67%) to amend certain charter provisions, a classified board with staggered terms, and no written consent unless unanimous by all shareholders. In short, reasonable shareholder rights are missing. […]
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) operates as an online retailer in North America and internationally. It is one of the stocks in my portfolio. Their annual meeting is coming up on 6/10/2015. ProxyDemocracy.org had the vote of four funds when I checked and voted on 6/3/2015. I voted with management 60% of the time and assigned Amazon a proxy score of 60. (more…)
Amazon.com (AMZN), is one of the stocks in my portfolio. Their annual meeting is coming up on 5/21/2014. ProxyDemocracy.org had collected the votes of four funds when I checked and voted on 5/15/2014. I voted with management % of the time. View Proxy Statement. All that talent at AMZN and they didn’t even bother to provide a linked table of contents. […]
On January 14th I attended another great event at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance. It was a dialogue between Professor Dan Siciliano, Faculty Director of the Rock Center and Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. There was plenty of opportunity for audience participation… many getting in two questions. […]
Amazon.com, Inc. ($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 […]