The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of institutional investors representing $200 billion in invested capital that engage corporations on the environmental and social impacts of their operations, sent a letter yesterday to all U.S. Senators urging them not to pass the Financial CHOICE Act. The proposed legislation, which passed the House and is currently […]
The deadline for submitting comments on the SEC’s proposed pay ratio disclosure is coming up quickly on December 2, 2013. SEC general comment instructions. Submit Comments on S7-07-13 Pay Ratio Disclosure. Get your comments in soon, before Thanksgiving. Another advantage to earlier submittal is that those who wait for the deadline are likely to borrow from previous […]
Last week the SEC finally proposed rules to require public companies to disclose the pay ratio between their CEO and their employees, as mandated by Dodd-Frank. Companies would have to disclose the ratio between CEO compensation and the median pay of their employees. Update: Comments due December 2nd. As reported by the WSJ, the ratio of “average” […]
The following are cryptic notes and a few photos taken at the 2013 Millstein Forum held June 24 & 25 at Columbia Law School. Be sure to check out the Forum’s photo gallery for more photos, agenda, notes, etc. Moderator: Ira M. Millstein, Chair, Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at the Columbia Law School; Counsel, Systemic Risk Council; Senior Partner, […]
A proposal by Qube Investment Management, which owns 10,208 shares of Microsoft ($MSFT), to cap pay has been challenged through the “no-action” process. See incoming correspondence to the SEC. The resolved clause of Qube’s proposal reads as follows: Resolved: The the Board of Directors and/or the Compensation Committee limit the average individual total compensation of […]
In The Successes and Failures of Whistleblower Laws, Robert G. Vaughn puts his life-long interest in perspective. A background with Nader’s Raiders studying federal agencies, work as an attorney representing whistleblowers, academic research and insights gained through study abroad facilitate Vaughn’s ability to evaluate the laws through theory and practice, stories and themes. From Stanley Milgram […]
Below are some relatively quick notes I took at the Corporate Directors Forum 2013, held on the beautiful campus of the University of San Diego, January 27-29, 2013. See materials, Corporate Directors Forum 2013: Bonus Session, and Corporate Directors Forum 2013 – Day 1, Part 1. The program was subject to the Chatham House Rule, so there will be little in […]
The U.S. Chamber Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness (CCMC) will hold a half-day event on Wednesday, December 5, 2012 in Washington DC to take an in-depth look at the influence of proxy advisors and the state of corporate governance in the U.S. It would be nice to get some shareowners out to at least listen and report back to […]
Continuing challenges to exclusive forum bylaw provisions – Lexology An increasingly popular trend in recent years has been the adoption by Delaware public companies of an exclusive forum provision in their bylaws. An exclusive forum provision generally provides for the Delaware Court of Chancery to be the exclusive forum for certain disputes (including derivative actions, breach […]
With the passage of the Dodd-Frank and the Sarbanes Oxley Acts, clawback policies have become increasingly prevalent among public companies. However, it is rare to find a company actually put a clawback policy into effect. Citing Equilar’s findings from the 2012 Clawback Policies Report, we review what a clawback policy is and we examine what […]
A whistleblower who helped the Securities and Exchange Commission stop a multi-million dollar fraud will receive nearly $50,000 — the first payout from a new SEC program to reward people who provide evidence of securities fraud. (more…)
Click here now to tell the SEC to require companies to disclose CEO-to-worker pay ratios. If you own stock, click here to get information on how to vote your shares on “say-on-pay” proxy proposals. (more…)
SVNACD Program 1/19/2012; 7:30-8:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast; 8:00-9:30 a.m. Palo Alto, CA The stock market still has not recovered from the meltdown of 2008, and many companies have had severe reductions in their workforces, but CEO (more…)
Even thought the SEC’s final regulations for the Dodd-Frank whistleblower program just became effective on August 12, 2011, the agency has already filed its first report on the whistleblower program. During the first seven weeks of the program, the agency received 334 whistleblower tips. The SEC itself cautions that “due to the relatively recent launch of the […]
Daniel F. Pedrotty, AFL-CIO, posted Why CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratios Matter to Investors to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulations on Thursday August 11. I’ve been meaning to mention it since then, mostly so that I have it file on my blog for future reference. I’ve got almost 16 years of […]
When I reviewed the first edition of The Role of Independent Directors after Sarbanes-Oxley by Bruce F. Dravis I called it an entire reference library in a thin volume. For the second edition, entitled The Role of Independent Directors in Corporate Governance, the number of pages has gone up from about 170 to 250 and […]
Yesterday, the United States Proxy Exchange (USPX) released standards for shareowners to use in making say-on-pay voting decisions. “Say-on-pay” rules mandated by Dodd-Frank allow shareowners to express an opinion on executive compensation at annual meetings. But to make informed voting decisions, shareowners must first assess the compensation packages boards propose. That is not easy, since […]
This Week in the Boardroom: 7/14/11 TK Kerstetter, President, Corporate Board Member; Scott Cutler, Executive Vice President, NYSE Euronext; and Stephen Lamb, Partner, Paul Weiss discuss the fact that losing a say-on-pay vote increases the likelihood of a shareowner lawsuit. See also Frivolous Say on Pay Lawsuits: Another Unintended Consequence. This seems like a no-brainer to me. Over […]
The Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce made their case and the Court found the SEC rulemaking on proxy access arbitrary and capricious “for having failed once again… to adequately assess the economic effects of a new rule.” The SEC rules certainly didn’t come out the way Les Greenberg and I envisioned when we petitioned […]
New research from Cesare Fracassi of the Department of Finance at the University of Texas at Austin and Geoffrey Tate of the Department of Finance at the University of California, Los Angeles finds that board composition should be a continuing target of regulatory reforms. Our results suggest that having directors with external network ties to the CEO may undermine […]
Eleanor Bloxham, a contributor to Fortune magazine, tells readers Why corporate directors should thank Dodd and Frank. With investors focused on “say-on-pay,” ISS recommendations against directors are down substantially. Ture, but this isn’t likely to last. Most institutional investors seem to be taking a year off from voting against compensation committee members, giving them a free […]
GovernanceMetrics International recently sampled large corporations and found that CEO pay jumped 27% in 2010 to a median of $9 million. According to William Lazonick, professor at the University of Massachusetts, in 2010 the S&P 500 jumped 12.8%, capping a two-year gain of 39.3%. Companies in the S&P 500 boosted profits by 47% in 2010, […]
The debate over the best frequency for “say on pay” votes has reached a tipping point, as a majority of S&P 500 and Russell 3000 firms have urged their investors to support annual advisory votes on executive compensation. As required by the Dodd-Frank Act, this year’s corporate proxy statements include a “say when” vote that […]
Lynn A. Stout argues the credit crisis was not due primarily to changes in the markets, it was due to changes in the law, specifically the Commodities Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000’s sudden and wholesale removal of centuries-old legal constraints on speculative trading in over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. Derivative contracts are probabilistic bets on future […]
When I linked to the video it had been viewed six times. Watch the numbers climb.. or maybe the counter doesn’t work. Charles Elson is one of the brightest minds in corporate governance. He should be heard. Don’t miss this lecture with Q&A
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP produced a good legal primer, Corporate Governance: An Overview of Public Company Requirements, last month. Read it now before it is out of date. Covers Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, and listing requirements in eleven sections: Director Independence Audit Committees Compensation Committees Nominating Committees Compensation Codes of Conduct Certifications Directors/Officers Disclosure Foreign Issuers […]
SEC Proposes New Whistleblower Program Under Dodd-Frank Act (Press Release No. 2010-213; November 3, 2010. Section 922 of the Dodd Frank bill gives the SEC the authority to make awards to whistleblowers under regulations prescribed by the SEC of not less than 10 percent, in total, of what has been collected of the monetary sanctions […]
In his paper, The Corporate Governance Provisions of Dodd-Frank, Stephen M. Bainbridge provides a brief overview of the seven principal corporate governance provisions of The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (better known as “The Dodd-Frank Act”). Section 951 creates a so-called “say on pay” mandate, requiring periodic shareholder advisory votes on […]
As many of you know, I petitioned the SEC last year to change the rule that allows blanks on a partially filled proxy or voter instruction forms (VIFs) to go to management and have also complained to the SEC about Broadridge’s failure to impartially identify proxy proposals on VIFs (see Investors Against Genocide Fighting American […]
Disclaimer: Given Dodd-Frank, proxy plumbing and all those comments I want to provide the SEC, the report below doesn’t do the ICGN Mid-Year Conference justice. I wrote this up more than a week later with poor notes and memory. Comments, corrections and substitute photos are solicited. Sharing Perspectives Across the Atlantic. Phil Angelides, Lord McFall […]
As many of you know, I petitioned the SEC last year to change the rule that allows blanks on a partially filled proxy or voter instruction forms (VIFs) to go to management. (see 4-583 at http://www.sec.gov/rules/petitions.shtml) The way I read Dodd-Frank SEC.957, it appears to prohibit broker voting for say on pay, directors and “any […]
The following is from a speech by SEC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar. Hat tip to Broc Romanek for bringing it to our attention. Congress has made clear that efforts to recruiting and promote employees from all backgrounds are efforts that the SEC, and all other financial regulators, should be undertaking. In particular, Section 342 of […]
The SEC published Rule 14a-11 providing proxy access in the Federal Register (.pdf). The rule is effective 60 days after being published in the Federal Register, or November 15, 2010. Any issuer whose one year anniversary for mailing date is prior to March 15, 2011 will not be subject to a proxy access campaign in 2011. (Hat […]
Before voting American Capital Ltd. (ACAS) I checked at ProxyDemocracy.org and saw how CalSTRS is voting. I voted with them against Harper, Lundine, Peterson, Puryer, stock option plan and against the issuance of convertible securities. CalPERS did not post how they are voting. I found no “advocates” at MoxyVote.com. Although I would be happier knowing […]
For humor, view Life After Death by Powerpoint 2010 by Don McMillan. I haven’t read the book but here’s the trailer for Freakonomics. (Not much content in the trailer… even they end saying something like total BS… I guess that’s hip.) Rules of the Board – Corporate Board Rules (PBS), how much shareholders can expect […]