DEI support remains strong despite attacks by President Trump and officials in several states. Many states have issued guidance on how to stay legally compliant. As Timothy Smith of the Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) points out, “this proxy season, approximately 98% of the shares voted to maintain current corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.” […]
CalPERS Should Adopt IRV for Board Elections. That is the argument Randy Cheek and James McRitchie made in a draft rulemaking petition to the Board in a 9:24 AM email to board@calpers.ca.gov on 9/21/2022 under Government Code section 11340.6. As of the date of this post, the Board has yet to even acknowledge receipt. That feels […]
Musings Missed Musings; not all of mine got mentioned at the Forum. I had the distinct pleasure of being a panelist at the Public Funds Forum 2022 with Maine’s Treasurer Henry Beck and David Wescoe, Executive Director of the Texas Municipal Retirement System. Our topic was Best Practices in Fund Governance. I thought of several […]
The second annual Board Governance Research report on Women on Boards of Companies Headquartered in California examines the current state of board gender diversity. California made history in 2018 by becoming the first state in the U.S. to require that public companies headquartered in the state have women on their boards. Last year’s report was cited in […]
SB 826 requires specified California-based public corporations to include women directors on their board. Sidley Austin LLP put out a bulletin on the topic. To ensure it receives widespread circulation, I am reproducing its main text below, with one minor change to break up an absurdly long sentence. (more…)
By August 31, 2018, California could become the first state in the nation with gender quotas to mandate publicly held companies that base their operations in the state to have women on their boards. The legislation—SB 826—will require public companies headquartered in California to have a minimum of one female on its board of directors […]
The rewards of corporate leadership accrue faster for men. Not only do women hold just one in nine of the executive and board positions in California’s top 400 public companies, an annual University of California, Davis, study shows that that the women in top executive roles are not being promoted to the highest levels, and […]
Yesterday, in Part I, I discussed the most recent UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders: A Census of Women Directors and Executive Officers and how it led me to invest disproportionately in firms with more women CEOs and NEOs. Just how are women different than men and what kind of changes can we expect or […]
Since starting this blog in 1995, I’ve pushed for greater diversity on boards and in named executive officers (NEOs). Progress has proceeded at a glacial pace, at least in the United States. For the ninth year, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, in partnership with Watermark, published the annual UC Davis Study of California […]
Robert Monks has just begun a series of articles at CSRwire on his most recent book, Citizens DisUnited: Passive Investors, Drone CEOs, and the Corporate Capture of the American Dream (my review). Part one of the CSRwire is A Simple Solution to Runaway Corporate Power. See also, Robert A.G. Monks, Crusading Against Corporate Excess, NYTimes, July 6th. His main message […]
The 400 largest companies headquartered in California, representing almost $3 trillion in shareholder value, still resemble a “boys’ club” with women filling fewer than 10 percent of top executive jobs, a University of California, Davis, study has found. Incremental gains have been pitiful, in my opinion. The Graduate School of Management’s eighth annual UC Davis Study of California Women […]
Great reporting of Microsoft’s annual meeting yesterday by Seattle Times technology reporter Janet I. Tu. She did a fine job of covering the voting results, presentations and Q&A. (more…)
Half of employers in the UK don’t offer a pension to their employees. Auto-enrolment, the opt-out defined-contribution system designed to fill this gap, was introduced in the UK on October 1. Top1000Funds.com interviewed Lawrence Churchill who chairs he government-funded pension fund, NEST, one of the funds on offer, during the first day of the rest of the fund’s life. […]
As Laura Berry mentioned at the conference, this is an event to recharge your batteries. It is great to learn what others are doing. Of course, the list of things I need to do grows exponentially every time I attend one of these gatherings of mostly California public pension funds. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer: Nothing I […]
Newly appointed Commissioner of California Corporations, Jan Owen, discusses the new “For Benefit” laws and provides a status update of other pertinent issues affecting public and private corporations. Sponsored by the Northern California chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors. Event details at bottom. (more…)
Disclaimer: These are my notes from the conference of mostly California pension funds. I’m not a very quick note taker, so I have a tendency to fill in the “gaps” with relevant material from the Internet and with my own interpretation of what where I think the speaker was going. These notes are basically a […]
The highly respected California attorney Keith Paul Bishop seems to think it could be argued, depending on the state of incorporation (Are Proxy Access Bylaws Legal?, Corporate and Securities Law, 12/8/2011). Most need no reminder that in 2009 Delaware enacted legislation, H.B. 19, 145th Gen. Assem. (Del. 2009), to explicitly authorize proxy access bylaws. Tit. 8, Del. Code § […]