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 […]
Conservative TV and Corporate Social Responsibility. Again, public opinion is the driver. A 2017 Pew Research Center study found that 37% of Americans get their news from local television news. Only 28% get their news from cable TV, while 26% tune into network news. Sinclair Broadcasting expands by acquiring those trusted local TV stations and […]
Money and Politics Get a Divorce. That would be a nice headline. It has been more than ten years since the US Supreme Court held that corporations could spend unlimited funds on election campaigns in their decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Money and Politics Get a Divorce: Still Waiting Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion […]
Corporations are channeling unprecedented amounts of secret money into our elections. Even worse, they’re doing it with our savings. Help stop retirement fund manager Vanguard from channeling our savings into secret-money politics. (more…)
More of my notes from the Society’s 2015 National Conference in Chicago, 6/24-27. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Sorry to be posting so long after the event but I still find them useful… and going through my notes may help me remember some of the more interesting points. David Axelrod Believer: My Forty Years in Politics @davidaxelrod I’m not sure why David Axelrod […]
The July 2014 edition of Corporate Governance: An International Review contains four research papers, all dealing with firms outside the US and UK, which usually get most of the attention. Still, insights from these studies could help efforts around the globe, including the US and UK. Monitoring in Japan (more…)
Employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) companies saw an economic upturn in 2011, with higher productivity and stock price, according to a recent survey. Why aren’t the Presidential candidates pushing the benefits of employee ownership and participation? (more…)
The CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability ranks companies in the S&P 100 according to their disclosure and board oversight of political spending activities. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and with the (more…)
The Story of Stuff people did a great job of creating a video about Citizens United, asking for a Constitutional Amendment limiting corporate influence…very ambitious but unlikely to provide a solution anytime soon. The SEC ruled that shareowner proposals calling for approval of political spending must be included on the company’s proxy card and put […]
As my stocks tumble amidst growing uncertainty over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, I couldn’t help but wonder, how could I profit from those who seem bent on destroying the US economy? House Democrats are circulating a resolution accusing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) of having a conflict of interest in […]
The Conference Board formed a committee of representatives from Fortune 500 companies and “corporate citizenship executives” to research issues related to disclosure and accountability of corporate political spending and develop a report by fall that will provide corporations with a toolkit of resources to strengthen their governance practices in this area. The current member companies […]
In 2011, investors including many of our managers are filing 83 different corporate political spending shareholder resolutions. The motivation for these resolutions comes directly from the landmark decision by the Supreme Court in Citizen’s United vs. Federal Election Commission case that permits corporations to spend freely to influence American elections. By now, most people are […]
An Islamic Perspective on Governance (New Horizons in Money and Finance) by Zafar Iqbal and Mervyn K. Lewis reads like a carefully constructed dissertation setting forth a theory of justice, taxation, government finance and accountability, governance and corruption grounded in Islam. Indeed, it originated as an academic piece and is unlikely to find the wide audience […]