Virtual meeting problems were highlighted in this excerpt from CII’s Weekly Governance Alert Vol 25, Issue 17 | April 30, 2020 by Rosemary Lally. I am reproducing below in order to ensure it gets wider distribution. Virtual meetings, in my experience, have been more problematic when hosted by Computershare than Broadridge but I have had […]
Lawndale Calls for Improved Governance at Willbros Group Willbros Group – In a filing with the SEC on September 12, 2016, Mill Valley, California-based Lawndale Capital Management, LLC and its affiliates (“Lawndale”) filed a form 13D in Willbros Group (NYSE: WG), reflecting 5% ownership and calling for improvements in the company’s corporate governance policies and […]
This is the first time I’ve attended a Council of Institutional Investors (CII) semi-annual conference. As at most conferences, the biggest draw is the ability to network, making new contacts and refreshing old ones. I was delighted to reconnect with Meredith Miller, chief corporate governance officer, UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust. I hadn’t seen Meredith since we were […]
Guest Post: Andrew Shapiro is Founder, President and Portfolio Manager of Lawndale Capital Management, an investment advisor that has managed activist hedge funds focused on small- and micro-cap companies for over 21 years, one of the longest periods of experience deploying an activist/relational investment strategy today. The following is a press release from Lawndale. I […]
Has the Council of Institutional Investors (CII) turned over a new leaf or am I only beginning to notice because they recently came out publicly agreeing with me? Three years ago a group of us petitioned the SEC to clarify that the same rules that apply to proxies also apply to voter information forms, VIFs. […]
In light of the IPOs and subsequent performances of Facebook, Groupon, Zynga, etc., there has been renewed discussion in Silicon Valley. When two classes of common stock that place control of the board in the hands of the founders and not the investors, do investors benefit or does it just entrench management? One argument in […]