Walmart 2023. Fair Elections is just one of several issues to be voted on before the annual meeting at 8:30 am Pacific on May 31, 2023. Vote AGAINST Flynn, Harris, Horton, Mayer, Penner Stephenson, pay, auditor, #8, #11; FOR Fair Elections #9 and most other shareholder proposals. Join the meeting with your control number. I […]
Chipotle Mexican Grill 2023. Fair Elections is just one of several issues to be voted on before the annual meeting at 8:00 am Pacific on May 25, 2023. Vote AGAINST Baldocchi, Engles, Fili-Krushel, Gutierrez, Niccol, Winston, pay, auditor; FOR Fair Elections #5, Free Association #6. You cannot just join the meeting with your control number. […]
The following guest post originally appeared as a 2019 supplement to The Shareholder Service Optimizer. See Publishers Note at the bottom of this post for more details on how it was changed and how it is relevant to both issuers and employee shareholders. (more…)
Apple 2022 annual meeting is March 4, 9 AM Pacific Time. To attend, vote, and submit questions during the Annual Meeting visit here. You will also need your voter control number. Of course, I recommend voting in advance. To enhance corporate governance and long-term value, vote Against Gore, Jung, Levinson, Sugar, Auditor, Exec Pay, Stock […]
Reform No-Action Process Reform no-action process. That was the call of a recent letter by the Shareholder Rights Group to John Coates in his new role as Acting Director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance. The letter is posted below. Some formatting changes were made and I added links to put our request to reform […]
Majority Voting 2021. Proxy proposals provide powerful tools to hold corporations accountable. YourStake.org is an online petition platform for financial advisors. The combined savings of many citizens make up the majority of investment into big companies. Companies already respond to big investors. Now they will respond to you if you let them know your concerns. Find a financial […]
The Counsel of Institutional Investors (CII) took a very strong stand yesterday, asking Whole Foods Market to amend its proxy access proposal to conform with the “3 percent for three years” standard applicable to groups. Whole Foods appears to have generated their proposal in direct response to mine in order to obtain a no-action letter from the […]
Most people don’t like their behavior criticized. CEOs and boards almost always fight my proxy proposals aimed at improving corporate governance. I wasn’t happy with the Deal Professor’s criticisms of my shareowner activism in his August 19th NYTimes article, Grappling With the Cost of Corporate Gadflies. He also criticizes John Chevedden and William Steiner. I stewed for days […]
Below is an email I sent to Pensions & Investments (P&I) editorial chief Barry Burr praising their editorial enhancing fiduciary duty and opining on how it may speed the arrival of the time when retail investors will vote their values with the simple push of a button or two on their cell phones. I will follow […]
CorpGov.net publisher, James McRitchie presents proposal #5 for the 2014 annual meeting of shareowners, which requests the Board of The Coca-Cola Company move prospectively to an independent board chair. To see how I voted on the rest of the issues, click on The Coca-Cola Company (KO): How I Voted – Proxy Score 63 – Things Go […]
BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) have issued a call for papers that address global governance challenges. Academics and governance practitioners are invited to submit original papers focused on emerging issues and opportunities likely to impact boardrooms and/or shareholders over the next decade. (more…)
Don’t miss the following great reads: Eleanor Bloxham, CEO of The Value Alliance Activist shareholders’ top priorities for 2014. A must read for directors and shareowners alike. Here’s the first paragraph. Many of us free ride on actions taken by active, long-term shareholders. These unsung heroes goad managers and boards to reach better decisions, make available […]
One way to use Sharegate is to announce your proxy votes. Far too many retail shareowners just trash their proxies instead of using them. A common misconception is that shareowners should take the Wall Street Walk and sell if they are displeased with any aspect of a company they own. That is like saying you should […]
I have a ‘no-action’ request by Apple on my desk. They are fighting my attempt to include consideration of a proxy access proposal at their next annual meeting. Like most no-action requests to the SEC, this one is full of dry uninspired attempts to raise procedural minutiae as a basis for exclusion. Also sitting on my […]
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 […]
Tomorrow’s Corporation that We Need Today: Getting there from here. David Langstaff, president and CEO of TASC Inc., discusses why understanding the purpose of the corporation is so important and suggests next steps. March 7, 2013. (more…)
CalSTRS announced its vote at the March 6, 2013, Walt Disney Company annual shareholder meeting. CalSTRS voted against several directors and management proposals, and voted for shareholder proposals to allow proxy access and separate the CEO and chairman positions. What is significant about the announcement is that it went over each director candidate and issue on […]
This is the last in my series on the Corporate Directors Forum 2013. See materials, slideshow, Corporate Directors Forum 2013: Bonus Session, and Corporate Directors Forum 2013 – Day 1, Part 1, and Corporate Directors Forum: Day 1, Part 2. The program was subject to the Chatham House Rule, so there will be little in the way of attribution below but I hope to provide […]
Below are some relatively quick notes I took at the Corporate Directors Forum 2013, held on the beautiful campus of the University of San Diego, January 27-29, 2013. See materials, Corporate Directors Forum 2013: Bonus Session, and Corporate Directors Forum 2013 – Day 1, Part 1. The program was subject to the Chatham House Rule, so there will be little in […]
Below are some relatively quick notes I took at the Corporate Directors Forum 2013, held on the beautiful campus of the University of San Diego, January 27-29, 2013. See materials. The program was subject to the Chatham House Rule, so there will be little in the way of attribution below but I hope to provide some sense of the […]
Below are some relatively quick notes I took at the Corporate Directors Forum 2013, Bonus Session, held on the beautiful campus of the University of San Diego, January 27, 2013. For a list of conference materials, see the Forum’s official site. My site, Corporate Governance (CorpGov.net) is unaffiliated. The program was subject to the Chatham House Rule, so […]
Since the Cadbury Report was published in 1992 in the UK, there has been increasing emphasis not just by UK regulators but also by regulators from other countries, including the USA and Continental Europe, of the role of boards of directors in corporate governance. However, 20 years down the line it is still uncertain whether […]
Reuters’ blogger Felix Salmon shares a surprising list of which companies over the last 90 years have generated the most wealth for shareholders, and which ones have destroyed it. (more…)
Since 2004, the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance (CCGG) has prepared best practices documents for reporting issuers to provide guidance on effective disclosure communication related to corporate governance and executive compensation. These documents have been (more…)
Turkey became the first country to require issuers to offer electronic proxy voting with the 1 October inauguration of a voting platform from MKK called e-GEM. The system will stream annual general meetings (AGMs) real time and let shareowners communicate with each other, vote before the meeting, and even change their vote as an annual […]
The 2012 edition of Shareholder Activism Insight sees increasing opposition from shareowners during the next proxy season, according to 78% of respondents. Fully 84% predict an increase in the number of shareholder proposals with the financial services sector hit the hardest. One quarter of corporate executives think 30% or more of shareowner proposals will obtain […]
As many readers may know, a few months ago I joined the board of the United States Proxy Exchange (USPX). I’ve long been impressed with the work of USPX’s volunteer executive director, Glyn Holton. We worked closely on several sets of comments to the SEC, Model Shareowner Proposal for Proxy Access and subsequent no-action responses, Shareowner Guidelines for Say-on-Pay […]
I get frequent alerts for news on shareowner activism from various sources. I’ve seen this press release sent out by Susman Godfrey L.L.P. concerning their win against a small shareowner pop up so many times I can no longer ignore it. (more…)
TheShareholderActivist.com™ is a new source for information and advice to facilitate responsible shareholder activism. The site includes tools, tactics, and techniques to help retail investors fully exercise their rights in publicly traded (more…)
The average time in which Americans hold a stock has gone up. (more…)
CBS News identifies the 10 biggest market losers of 2011. HP and BofA are both targets of (more…)
Delaware Chief Justice Myron T. Steele sponsored by The Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance on Nov 15, 2011. Steele has published over 300 opinions resolving disputes among members of limited liability companies, and limited partnerships, and between shareholders and management of both publicly traded and close corporations. Watch the video. (more…)
Looking for work-life balance? Work from home (at least part of the time). Set your own pay — $1,000 per hour and up. No threat of layoffs or workforce cutbacks. Part-time hours and multiple positions available. Excellent way to supplement your retirement income. No application necessary… The term “chemistry,” or your ability to work collegially with the other members, is […]
What is Sharegate? On its most basic level, www.sharegate.com is a social network for all players in the corporate structure, including shareholders, corporations and their investor relations representatives, institutional fund managers, and affiliates such as special interest groups, academic professionals, and (more…)
I’m somewhat heartened by a recent CII announcement on access proposals: We welcome the changes to Rule 14a-8(i)(8). We encourage Council members and other long-term shareowners to consider using this new tool in a focused and consistent manner that enhances the U.S. corporate governance model and (more…)