SEC Release File No. S7-23-19 comments are due today. This Release and that of File No. S7-22-19 are the most dangerous I have seen during my twenty-five years of blogging. Both would make corporations less accountable to their owners and the public. Both would help turn corporate governance into a more democratic-free zone. Thousands of comments opposing […]
File No. S7-23-19 would set draconian requirements to submit and to resubmit shareholder proposals based on the desire of entrenched managements and boards to thwart accountability and to create democratic-free zones around corporate governance.
Proposals & shareholders are under attack by the SEC. Review finds no necessity for SEC proposed rules and a likely market cost of billions of dollars in American wealth. (more…)
Gadfly importance to democratic corporate governance is often underrated. We are currently under attack by the Business Roundtable (BRT) and others seeking to substantially raise the ownership threshold for submitting and resubmitting proposals. BRT, for example, contends proposals from small shareholder divert “significant time and resources to issues that, at best, have an attenuated connection to the […]
McRitchie 2019 proxy season results are not something I normally report. It feels too much like bragging. I do my work to drive better, more accountable corporate governance. However, the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance is “considering recommending that the Commission propose rule amendments regarding the thresholds for shareholder proposals under Rule 14a-8.” It is […]
More beta is what investors should focus on order to increase long-term returns, argue Jim Hawley and Jon Lukomnik in their paper, The Long and Short of It: Are We Asking the Right Questions? – Modern Portfolio Theory and Time Horizons (download). That has also been the objective of Corporate Governance (CorpGov.net) since 1995. I […]
American values were recognized as at risk in 1932 when Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means argued that with dispersed shareholders, ownership has been separated from their control. (The Modern Corporation and Private Property) Ironically, concentration of equities under the umbrella of three or four indexed funds presents an opportunity to end that divide and make companies […]