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 […]
Kenneth Steiner provides a review of his stockholder activism in 2019…. accomplishments so far this year and a preview of his 2020 proxy season. This follows Bill Steiner – Legacy Continues. (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…)
Citi reached an historic agreement to disclose wage data and adjust employee salaries in a company-wide effort to achieve gender pay equity. Arjuna Capital agreed to withdraw its gender pay shareholder resolution after the agreement. Citigroup (Citi) and Arjuna Capital disclosed that Citi is taking steps to provide gender and ethnicity wage data and commit to […]
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…)
TK Kerstetter, Chairman, NYSE Governance Services – Corporate Board Member interviews Scott Cutler, EVP, of NYSE Euronext. (more…)
Re opposition to John Harrington’s proxy access proposal at Bank of America ($BAC), based on language that I helped develop. For background, see Bank of America (BAC) Faces Proxy Access on May 8th. I hope opponents will reconsider. From one analysis recommending a vote against: While this amount ($660 million) is significant in absolute terms, shareholders may have […]
On March 26, 2012, SEC staff issued their decision on a request by iRobot (IRBT) to exclude my proxy access proposal from their proxy. Although similar proposals had survived no-action requests last year, IRB management held out hopes that small changes made in the proposal might have made the proposal “vague” under rule 14a-8(1)(3) or “ordinary […]
This is Part 2 of a post which started out reviewing the important thesis outlined in The Agency Costs of Agency Capitalism: Activist Investors and the Revaluation of Governance Rights by Ronald J. Gilson and Jeffrey N. Gordon (January 1, 2013). See Agency Capitalism: Corrective Measures Part 1 and Part 3. Current law encourages mindless indexing of portfolios and voting like lemmings […]
Climate Change Portfolio Exposure Boston Common Asset Management has a proposal that will appear on the proxy of PNC Financial Services ($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 […]
Of the 16 proxy access proposals filed by proponents in 2012 and listed on the ISS Checklist, eight are being challenged at the SEC. Ferro, Hewlett-Packard, Nabors Industries, CME Group, Pioneer Natural Resources, Staples and Charles Schwab have not sought no-action relief from proposals at the commission, according to data from ISS. Conversely, Bank of […]
In a recent Forbes article entitled Warren Buffett, And His Board, May be Too Old to Run Berkshire Hathaway, Francine McKenna makes the case for both greater vigilance by Berkshire investors (including the author) and a different concept of corporate governance. Ms. McKenna may well be right as to her ultimate conclusion, although Berkshire’s performance […]