Pay Equity Disclosure 2023 is a hot topic for CorpGov.net thanks to assistance from Julia Cedarholm of Arjuna Capital, who contributed to their groundbreaking Racial and Gender Pay Scorecard. Arjuna’s efforts in this area and their reports since 2018 are impressive. Over the last seven years, 143 shareholder proposals requesting pay gap disclosures have been filed […]
Apple Exempt Solicitation 2023 filed by proponent James McRitchie. Check back soon for recommended proxy votes on other issues appearing on the ballot. Apple shouldn’t have proxy access governance associated with mountaintop removal or accounting fraud. PX146G Apple Exempt Solicitation Written materials are submitted pursuant to Rule 14a-6(g)(1) promulgated under the Securities Exchange Act of […]
Employee ownership is my next focus. Support for proposals in 2020 and 2021 to encourage companies to add workers to the board has been weak. It is time to reassess. My conversations with CalPERS were especially interesting. Directors I interviewed who were elected by the members favored our proposals. Staff, those charged with voting shares […]
Amazon 2021 annual meeting is May 26, 9 AM Pacific Time. To attend, vote, and submit questions during the Annual Meeting visit here. You will need the control number you got from ProxyVote or elsewhere. Amazon will limit questions to one per shareholder. Of course, I recommend voting in advance online by May 25. To […]
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 […]
Election fraud attempt by Citigroup points to the need for more participation in decision-making by employees to ensure ethical conduct. Citigroup tries to cheat by telling us we need to meet SEC rules today for the 2021 AGM that don’t become effective until 2022. With a market cap of more than $82B, don’t tell me […]
JPMorgan 2020 annual meeting is 5/19/2020 at 7AM Pacific virtually. Presumably we will be able to vote by entering our 16-digit control number found on the proxy card. To enhance long-term value: Vote AGAINST Burke, Pay, Auditor, #8. Vote FOR other directors, other shareholder proposals. See list of all virtual-only meetings maintained by ISS. (more…)
Alphabet 2019 annual meeting is June 19th. To enhance long-term value WITHHOLD vote from all directors. Vote AGAINST all Board proposals and FOR all shareholder proposals, especially #4 to recapitalize shares. (more…)
American Express 2019 annual meeting is May 7th. Vote by May 6 online. For optimum accountability and shareholder return vote AGAINST John Brennan, Peter Chernin, Stephen Squeri, Ralph de la Vega, Ronald Williams, the Auditor, Say-on-Pay. Vote FOR Written Consent, Deduct Impact of BuyBacks on Pay, Report on Gender Pay Gap. (more…)
Microcap Board Governance, a study conducted by Board Governance Research LLC commissioned by the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute (IRRCi), examines microcap board governance at 160 companies. That represents about ten percent of all companies with less than $300 million in market capitalization traded on major U.S. stock exchanges. (more…)
Michael Garland: In the News Michael Garland, his boss Scott M. Stringer and the New York City Pension Funds are setting a higher bar for corporate boards and other funds with regard to corporate governance standards. I wish more would try to do half as much for shareholders. (more…)
American Express Proxy Voting Guide. American Express Company (AXP), together with its subsidiaries, provides charge and credit payment card products and travel-related services to consumers and businesses worldwide. It operates through four segments: U.S. Consumer Services, International Consumer and Network Services, Global Commercial Services, and Global Merchant Services. American Express is one of the stocks […]
The new Equilar GDI (Gender Diversity Index) found it will take nearly 40 years for Russell 3000 boards of directors to reach gender parity. If the current rate of growth remains the same, Russell 3000 boards would reach 50% male and 50% female representation in Q4 2055. Diversity Forum I urge readers 5/10 join CalPERS […]
Facebook Inc (NASD:FB), one of the companies in my portfolio, builds products that enable people to connect and share through mobile devices and personal computers. Their annual meeting is coming up on June 20, 2016. ProxyDemocracy.org had collected the votes of three fund families when I checked. Vote AGAINST pay, pay committee, board; FOR all shareholder proposals. I voted […]
eBay Inc (EBAY), which enables commerce through three reportable segments: Marketplaces, Payments and Enterprise, is one of the stocks in my portfolio. Their annual meeting is coming up on 5/1/2015. ProxyDemocracy.org had the votes of two funds when I checked and voted on 4/26/2015. I voted with management 67% of the time and assigned eBay a proxy score of 67. […]
New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli and Trillium Asset Management today announced that they have withdrawn the shareholder proposal they filed at eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) after the company agreed to revise its Governance Guidelines to include gender and racial diversity among the qualities its seeks in its board members. Several other issues remain on the […]
Corporate boards are entrusted to make sound and informed business decisions on behalf of shareholders and to take their best interest into consideration. Decisions made at the board level are of strategic significance that may perhaps completely transform the future path of corporations. Examples of major strategic decisions include mergers and acquisitions, entering new markets, […]
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 […]
“Investing In Women – Increasing Opportunities For Funding Women” Presented by WITI (Women In Technology International) and NanoTecNexus. Presented at WITI San Diego Network meeting. (more…)
The march of women into the upper echelon seems inevitable. A few points from the introduction: 60% of recent university graduates have been women, 50% of those graduating with advanced degrees in law and medicine, 1/3 of those with MBAs. There will be labor and skill shortages in all developed countries over the next two […]
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 […]
The International Corporate Governance Network sent comments to the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) and the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). I think they warrant widespread reading and adoption. What follows are highlights from the OSC letter. Gender diversity is a competitiveness issue for a company as a whole and a critical dimension of governance, both in […]
Abstract: How does gender-balance affect the working of boards of directors? I examine boards that have been required for two decades to be relatively gender-balanced: boards of business companies in which the Israeli government holds a substantial equity interest. I construct a novel database based on the detailed minutes of 402 board- and board-committee meetings […]
Despite an intense public debate and some voluntary initiatives at national and European level, the situation has not changed significantly in recent years: an incremental average increase of the number of women on boards of just 0.6 percentage points per year has been recorded since 2003. It is for this reason that the Commission is […]