Meta Lawsuit: In Brief Many thanks to Rick Alexander and The Shareholder Commons for allowing me to play a small role in opening up a new legal battle. The Meta lawsuit contends that directors of Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook, must consider the effects of its commercial activities on the portfolios of Meta shareholders, not just Meta’s short-term […]
Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World (Berrett-Koehler, 2021) is Judy Samuelson’s latest book. Fresh off her testimony to Congress on shareholder primacy, discuss the issues with Judy on Corporate Accountability Forums, Monday 3/28/2022 at 2 pm Eastern – Register now to participate. (more…)
#FlushPGDirectors is the creative hashtag used by a coalition calling on Procter & Gamble (Ticker: PG) to vote against Angela Braly and James McNerney, key Directors. This is because they have failed to address ESG human rights and environmental violations in supply chains. BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street have made bold commitments to use their […]
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 […]
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 […]
Stanford’s David F. Larcker and Brian Tayan have a new paper called Loosey-Goosey Governance: Four Misunderstood Terms in Corporate Governance in which they appear to think they’ve discovered what everyone has understood forever — that there are limits to structural solutions and that checklists of best practices are not especially helpful. We were very clear […]
SSgA critical of GHG short-term perspective offered up by oil and gas, mining and utility disclosures on addressing greenhouse gas emissions. If we are to maintain a salubrious environment, much of the coal and oil will turn out to be stranded assets. Given that reality, I reallocated most positions I had in this sector to […]
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…)
What follows are quick takes, with many incomplete sentences, from the recent Directors Forum 2019 held in San Diego. These are highlights from the notes of one participant, from my perspective as a shareholder advocate. If you attended, I am sure you have different takeaways. Please share them as comments. Like all Directors Forums, this one […]
Glass Lewis 2019 proxy advice updates address many issues. See 2019 Proxy Paper Guidelines: An Overview of the Glass Lewis Approach to Proxy Advice. I have reproduced much of the summary of changes below, leaving off the section discussing clarifying amendments. One that stands out for our small group of so-called ‘gadflies’ addresses our concern […]
Directors Forum 2018: Directors, Management & Shareholders in Dialogue brings together investors, directors and management to engage in open, off-the-record dialogue about today’s pressing governance issues. Speakers will put a spotlight on the escalating impact of “corporate culture” on business success. Hosted by Corporate Directors Forum, Directors Forum 2018 will be held on January 21-23, […]
Richard Bookstaber: Human Complexity and the Financial Markets Richard Bookstaber discusses value at risk modeling — easily the most illuminating talk at #CIIFall2017. It was certainly statistics aimed at the layperson. However, in listening to him, I was glad I completed by PhD comprehensive in statistics 35 years ago. I scribbled a few notes. Although I can’t […]
Moneyball Corporate Governance: making the best use of what limited capital is available – just like what the Oakland A’s had to do with their limited payroll. In the mid-1980s, New York Mets manager Davey Johnson was among the first in professional baseball to realize the advantage that could be gained by using computers and statistics […]
Norges Bank published their second annual report on responsible investment of the Government Pension Fund Global. They clarified expectations towards companies in 2015 and are creating a model I hope many will follow The report provides a comprehensive review of work by Norges Bank on responsible investment in the management of the fund. Key areas […]
Norway’s Resource Extraction The Government Pension Fund Global (Norges, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund), is one of the world’s largest funds initially funded by resource extraction. Learn about its history, objective and management in the video clip below. The fund is saving for the future generations in Norway; where is the American equivalent? To achieve broad […]
Here are more of my notes and photos from the Council of Institutional Investors Fall 2015 Conference in Boston. I added the subtitle to the name of this session, which mostly explored managing risk in low-return environment but touched on many additional topics. Feel free to post corrections, counterpoints and additional relevant material on topic, using […]
The John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance of the Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics at the University of Delaware will host a Corporate Governance Symposium on March 15, 2016. The focus of the Symposium will be “Critical Issues for Boards & Institutional Investors in 2016.” The Symposium will feature up to four […]
Gilead Sciences $GILD is one of the stocks in my portfolio. They are a research-based biopharmaceutical company that discovers, develops and commercializes innovative medicines in areas of unmet medical need Their annual meeting is coming up on 5/6/2015. ProxyDemocracy.org had the votes of four funds when I checked and voted on 4/28/2015. I voted with management 47% of the time […]
The following PX14A6G filing on a shareholder proposal at Anadarko $APC by As You Sow might be of interest to readers. I’m too busy with my own proposals to make all the links work and to neaten up this post but you can find them in the original filing here. I suspect we will see many […]
Proxy Mosaic is beginning a series of dialogues. The first is entitled “Are Meaningful Shareholder Proposals a Thing of the Past?” (more…)
The OECD is inviting public comment on its draft updated Principles of Corporate Governance – last updated in 2004. These principles (first published in 1999) have long been among the most influential sources of corporate governance guidelines for regulators, stock exchanges, investors and companies world-wide, and continue to be referenced as a benchmark for good governance practices. (more…)
A new report finds that US extractive companies expose shareholders to risks by neglecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights First Peoples Worldwide released the Indigenous Rights Risk Report at the SRI Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing, a product of two years of consultations with investment analysts, industry professionals, and Indigenous Peoples. The report analyzes 52 U.S. oil, gas, […]
Leaders from Osler and the Institute of Corporate Directors discuss the evolution of corporate governance and the release of Directors Responsibilities in Canada – a guide to understanding and fulfilling director responsibilities. Although written for Canada, it has general applicability worldwide. After the video, I suggest a couple of additional books. (more…)
Glyn Holton interviews Michael Yogg, author of the new book Passion for Reality: The Extraordinary Life of the Investing Pioneer Paul Cabot (Columbia Business School Publishing). Its about Paul Cabot, a pioneer of the mutual fund industry. In 1920s Boston, Cabot cofounded State Street Investment Corporation, one of the first open-ended mutual funds. (more…)
A three-year engagement by PRI signatories has resulted in improved transparency and disclosure of anti-corruption strategies, policies and management systems by several global companies with significant exposure to corruption risk. (more…)
CalPERS launched the Sustainable Investment Research Initiative (SIRI), in an effort to drive innovative thought leadership that will inform and advance the organization’s understanding of sustainability factors and the impact they have on financial performance. (more…)
GMI and Trucost announced a strategic partnership to incorporate Trucost environmental performance data into the GMI Analyst research platform. The agreement strengthens GMI’s existing governance analysis and will enable GMI clients – leading institutional investors, banks, insurers, auditors, regulators and corporations – to incorporate a measure of environmental risk alongside traditional financial metrics. (more…)
Cyberonics, Inc.’s stock has gained since the neurological device maker announced earnings growth in the three months ended July 27. But, according to GMIRatings, results may reflect a view through rose colored glasses. (more…)
GMI Ratings has long maintained that the increasing frequency of Black Swan events in capital markets will continue to challenge traditional approaches to risk modeling and portfolio management. For at least the past two decades, doubts have been mounting about the ability of classical economic theories and portfolio management philosophies to reliably describe, explain or […]
A roundup of just a few of many relevant news items worth reading. (more…)
Economic theorists have suggested the possibility that preferences are dynamic and vary with environmental conditions. Are Risk-Preferences Dynamic? Within-Subject Variation in Risk-Taking as a Function of Background Music investigates such preference interactions as a possible explanation to why risk preferences can change. (more…)
The following is a guest post by by Sonia Jaspal from her blog, Sonia Jaspal’s RiskBoard, originally posted on June 12, 2012. I’ve added a few links, a couple of ads and reformatted the post slightly. (more…)
We need to do a better job of evaluating the emotional competency or our leaders. “A fine balance has to be maintained between technical and emotional competency of the individual and organization objectives and culture, wrote Sonia Jaspal back in 11/16/2011. Here is an excerpt from her argument, which deserves wider circulation. (more…)
These are some relatively quick notes that I’m sharing from the Corporate Directors Forum 2012, held at the University of San Diego, January 22-24, 2012. This post may be a cryptic… incomplete sentences bt hopefully mor intelligible thN txt msgN or Tweets. (more…)
In response to increasing corporate exposure to global water supply threats and investment community interest in water-related issues, Ceres has released a new report and tool that investors and companies can use as a roadmap to enhanced water risk (more…)