Proxy Season 2021 Investor Sentiment Study: Background Proxy Season 2021 Investor Sentiment Study finds the rise and influence of individual investors presents unique opportunities to engage new investors like never before. A new survey from Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR) highlights how new and younger retail investors are thinking about investing and this year’s proxy […]
Professor Gensler Congratulations. When confirmed to chair the SEC, you can take a major role in reconstructing our financial and economic systems. Below, I offer the unsolicited advice of a real “Main Street” investor. Central to a recovery that helps America address its many issues (institutional racism, inequality, climate change, anomie, etc.) is a system […]
Gary Gensler, a former financial regulator, and Goldman Sachs banker, now at MIT, is rumored Biden’s choice to head the SEC. As head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), he helped uncover interest-rate rigging on Libor, which underpins $300T in loans. Banks had to cough up $9B in fines. He pushed for transparency around derivative trading and […]
The last set of questions for panel at the 2/19 SEC Roundtable deal with client directed voting (CDV). Below are a few thoughts with the help of readers. I welcome further comments. The SEC agenda and questions are in bold italics. Our thoughts are in normal type. Part 1 is here. This panel will focus on […]
(1/27/2015) The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it will host a roundtable on February 19 to explore ways to improve the proxy voting process. The roundtable, which will be held at the SEC’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, will focus on universal proxy ballots and retail participation in the proxy process. I will be a member […]
James McRitchie, the publisher of Corporate Governance and one of three retail shareowners accused in the New York Times of holding Corporate America ‘hostage,’ will be in Colorado Springs November 8th through the 12th, attending the SRI Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing. I am eager to meet with readers to discuss activist corporate governance strategies and […]
Yesterday, I posted a recent letter to the editor of Pensions & Investments praising their editorial, Winning Over Proxy Voters, which argues that institutional investors have a fiduciary duty to announce their proxy votes in advance of annual meetings, if doing so is likely to influence voters. If institutional investors heed their call, it will speed […]
On September 22, the HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation posted an article (The Promise of the Enhanced Broker Internet Platform) from John Endean, President of the American Business Conference, a coalition of CEOs of mid-cap companies. I attempted to post a comment on the HLS Forum but it appears to have fallen through the cracks. […]
This is Part 3 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) in Agency Capitalism: Corrective Measures (Part 1). In this post and in Agency Capitalism: Corrective Measures (Part 2) I hope […]
The deadline for comments on this important NYSE rulemaking that must be approved by the SEC is today, March 15, 2013, so act now or forever regret not taking action. See the rulemaking and comments already posted to SEC site. I’m concerned that provisions meant to facilitate voting on broker platforms may lead us right back into what […]
The Dodd-Frank Act established the Investor Advisory Committee (IAC) to advise the Securities and Exchange Commission on regulatory priorities, the regulation of securities products, trading strategies, fee structures, the effectiveness of disclosure, and on initiatives to protect investor interests and to promote investor confidence and the integrity of the securities marketplace. The IAC met for […]
Viewing the venture as a tragedy because it is folding is like saying Neil Armstrong was a failure because he left the moon and came back to Earth. Just as the Blue Marble photograph of Earth helped us see our world in a new light, Moxy Vote helped us see corporations differently. This gang of explorers blazed a […]
The new SEC Investor Advisory Committee (SECIAC) met for the first time last week. It appears there may be agreement by Committee members to first concentrate their efforts on retail investors. At least that was the message of several Committee members and the expressed wish of Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar. The SECIAC would do well to recommend […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission finally announced the formation of its new Investor Advisory Committee required by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. (more…)
Interesting article, Who Will Pay for Client-Directed Voting?, at the Securities Industry Blog on August 10, 2010, asks: Will the SEC approve it? Even if it did, who would build the technology to implement it and who will pay for it? Or, maybe the answer is would the SEC approve it without knowing that someone […]
The SEC has begun posting public comments regarding their Concept Release on the U.S. Proxy System. I will probably focus my own review on Part IV, section B. “Means to Facilitate Retail Investor Participation.” I sent in a set of initial comments dated 7/16/10, which focus on the need for an An Open Proposal for […]
According to the SEC, “client directed voting” will be included in a forthcoming concept release on “proxy plumbing” issues and SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro now indicates review by the Commission is forthcoming (see this post on the Forum). It is critical that shareowners become familiar with this term. The SEC can shape their concept […]
Historically, most retail shareowners have tossed their proxies. During the first year under the “notice and access” method for Internet delivery of proxy materials, less than 6% voted. This contrasts with almost all institutional investors voting, since they have a fiduciary duty to do so. “Client directed voting” (CDV), a term coined by Stephen Norman […]
Frank G. Zarb, Jr., a Partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, and John Endean, President of the American Business Conference, raise an important topic in a recent post to the HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation (Restoring Balance in Proxy Voting: The Case For “Client Directed Voting,” 1/14/2010). Unfortunately, their solution would likely […]
On November 16, 2009, the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University presented a lunch-time lecture with Mark Latham, Director of VoterMedia.org and ProxyDemocracy.org. Latham is also a member of the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee, as a representative of individual investors. He has written extensively on how the internet can […]