BAC Ascertain Client Voting Preferences is a new type of proxy proposal for the 2024 season from James McRitchie, premiering first at Bank of America (BAC). It asks BAC to report on the feasibility of offering granular proxy voting preferences so that clients can maximize portfolio-wide returns by pursuing voting strategies designed to push certain […]
Bank of America (BAC) shareholders can now look forward to nominating candidates to the Board of Directors in a deal negotiated by John Harrington, CEO of Harrington Investments, Inc., (HII) a socially responsible investment advisory firm based in Napa. The Bank adopted new “proxy access” bylaws reflecting changes driven by Harrington’s shareholder resolution. (more…)
CorpGov.net publisher/shareowner activist, James McRitchie in the news. Shareholders push for more say over board members (WSJ’s MarketWatch), on proxy access proposals at Bank of America, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Sued again for daring to file proxy proposals, EMC sues shareholder activists over bid to separate CEO, chairman roles (Boston Business Journal). They lost their ‘no-action’ request […]
John Harrington, of Harrington Investments, will present his proposal on proxy access at the upcoming Bank of America (BAC) meeting on May 8th in Charlotte, North Carolina. It will be the first time language modified to provide a floor for retail nominators of at least 1/2% will be voted on. That modification was made in an attempt […]
On March 26, 2012, SEC staff issued their decision on a request by iRobot (IRBT) to exclude my proxy access proposal from their proxy. Although similar proposals had survived no-action requests last year, IRB management held out hopes that small changes made in the proposal might have made the proposal “vague” under rule 14a-8(1)(3) or “ordinary […]
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 […]
Climate Change Portfolio Exposure Boston Common Asset Management has a proposal that will appear on the proxy of PNC Financial Services ($PNC) requesting that it report to shareowners on the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from its lending portfolio and its exposure to climate change risk in its lending, investing, and financing activities. Watch for your proxy. The […]
Bank of America executives, investors, and opponents alike reacted with surprise to yesterday’s news—posted for two hours on Dow Jones Newswire and elsewhere—that the mammoth financial institution, realizing it was heading for a taxpayer bailout, was asking Americans to start thinking about what they’ll do with the bank once they own it, and to start […]
ISS reported that Textron filed a Dec. 23 no-action petition with the SEC to omit a shareowner proposal from Ken Steiner that seeks proxy access using the model proposal developed by USPX. This appears to be the first no-action request filed on a proxy access proposal this season. The company asserts that Steiner’s resolution improperly constitutes multiple […]
CBS News identifies the 10 biggest market losers of 2011. HP and BofA are both targets of (more…)