(Guest Post by Robert A.G. Monks) Let me tell you about something I read recently called Who Cares? Corporate Governance in Today’s Equity Markets (OECD Work Paper #8) by Mats Isaksson and Serdar Celik. Mats has been a major figure in the corporate governance movement for many years and is one of the key people in […]
Tag Archives | Monks
Review Essay: Citizens DisUnited
James McRitchie, April 24, 2013 ,
Citizens DisUnited: Passive Investors, Drone CEOs, and the Corporate Capture of the American Dream both delights and informs as only Robert A.G. Monks can. No one else writes so well about topics like “How CEOs and the Business Roundtable Hijacked the World’s Greatest Wealth Machine” and those in the current volume because no one else has been as engaged […]
No Innocent Shareowners #OWS: The Duty of Care
James McRitchie, October 18, 2011 ,
John Paulson, the hedge fund titan who made billions in the financial crisis by betting against the subprime mortgage market defends the 1%: “The top 1 percent of New Yorkers pay over 40 percent of all income taxes, providing huge benefits to everyone in our city and state.” “I don’t think we see ourselves as […]
Shareowner Alienation
James McRitchie, September 29, 2011 ,
I stumbled upon an interesting article in the Vol. 52, No. S3, Supplement to the April 2011 edition of Current Anthropology, which gets to the heart of the schizophrenic way we have organized capitalism. While many of us work to make the world a better place, our investments externalize costs and jeopardize everything we hold […]
Wayback Machine: Ten Years Ago at CorpGov.net
James McRitchie, September 18, 2011 ,
Ten years ago this month I posted a review of Monks, Robert A. G., The New Global Investors: How Shareowners Can Unlock Sustainable Prosperity Worldwide, Capstone Publishing, 2001. “His perspective is that of an aristocratic shareholder activist, not a street demonstrator against the World Trade Organization… Monks appears to believe, and I agree, that corporate control has been […]
Video Friday: Bob Monks on Proxy Access Court Decision
James McRitchie, August 5, 2011 ,
The DC Court opinion on the SEC proxy rules, “tells you more about the Court than it does the issue or (more…)
Exxon Mobil: Voting Recommendations
James McRitchie, May 17, 2011 ,
AFSCME and RAM Trust urge shareowners to rein in CEO Pay, implement governance improvements at their May 25 meeting. AFSCME and RAM Trust recommend: Against ratifying executive pay (Item 3) For One Year frequency of the advisory vote on compensation (Item 4) Adopt a policy that the XOM Board Chair be an independent (more…)
Corporate Valuation
James McRitchie, May 3, 2011 ,
From Enron to Lehman Brothers and the subprime financial disaster, we’ve seen the worst decade ever in my lifetime for equities, down 3.3%. Is it time to start stuffing our money into the mattress or is it time to learn something about corporate valuation from two experts? Corporate Valuation for Portfolio Investment: Analyzing Assets, Earnings, […]
Video Friday: Robert Monks on CorpGov & Public Interest
James McRitchie, March 4, 2011 ,
Robert A.G. Monks has a new site and blog. It looks great. Read his Response to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report: Part 1. Monks once again identifies owners as the appropriate party to monitor corporate management. He notes that Greenspan was not only mistaken in his belief that corporations will preserve and enhance their own value, but […]
Robert A. G. Monks: Interview
James McRitchie, January 13, 2011 ,
Forty years ago, Robert A. G. Monks figured out who rules the world: corporate shareholders. Most just don’t realize it, and those who do are often afraid to use their power. So Monks decided to lead by example, and the corporate world hasn’t been the same since. (VANTAGE POINT-Robert A. G. Monks, MaineAhead.com, 1/2011)
No-Action Letters in Question
James McRitchie, May 12, 2010 ,
Robert A.G. Monks submitted a couple of shareowner proposals asking for chair and CEO positions to be split. The companies appealed to the SEC and were granted no-action letters… the SEC would take no action if the companies left the proposals off their proxies. Now Monks says the SEC should get out of the business […]
ShareOwners.org Organizes Around Citizens United
James McRitchie, February 4, 2010 ,
Shareowner organizations are working together to advance a three-pronged response to the last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision providing much greater latitude to corporations making campaign contributions: Direct engagement of management at publicly traded companies, modeled on the work done by Bruce Freed at the Center for Political Accountability and a number of institutional shareholders, […]
Corporate Governance: More Important than Ever with Supreme Court Decision
James McRitchie, January 21, 2010 ,
As the New York Times put it, “Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.” (Justices Overturn Key Campaign Limits, 1/22/10) Off to the right on the blog site of CorpGov.net, we […]
A Primer for Boards
James McRitchie, September 15, 2009 ,
Cornelis A. de Kluyver, an academic and practitioner with global experience, has written A Primer on Corporate Governance published by Business Expert Press. While not nearly as extensive as recent textbooks by Bob Tricker or Monks and Minow, this is a quick read that provides most of the basics for future directors and those who […]