Climate Risk Hypocrites exposed by Morningstar’s Jackie Cook and Tom Lauricella. The authors found support for climate-related proposals rose at Fidelity, State Street Global Advisors, and Vanguard. Support fell at American Funds and BlackRock. (Top Fund Companies’ Climate Change Votes: A Very Mixed Picture) (more…)
Driving Retail and Employee Votes The 2015 National Conference in Chicago, 6/24-27, was my first time attending one of the Society’s events. Part 1 and Part 2. Yes, I’m posting notes late but hopefully they are still useful. Panelists: Lawrence Dennedy, Irving Gomez, Martin Koopman, Theresa Molly In 2001 Prudential switched from a mutual to a public company, so they […]
In part 2 of a post on facilitating votes and activism by retail shareowners I continue to speculate on what could be done to improve the situation by recalling some of the better features of major efforts to date and possible improvements that would help conscientious shareowners. As Mark Latham reminded me after yesterday’s part 1, […]
Retail shareowners own about 1/3 of shares traded in the United States but vote only about 1/3 of the shares we own. As Nell Minow once quipped, “you can lead a shareholder to a lot of dense material, but you can’t make them read it.” (Video Friday: SEC Proxy Voting Roundtable) Our voting influence is much smaller […]
This guest post from Bruce Herbert of Investor Voice provides an overview of a simple majority vote counting shareholder initiative, which seeks to eliminate abstentions from the denominator in calculating votes as well as super majority threshold requirements that have not been approved by shareholders. “Fair corporate suffrage is an important right that should attach to every equity security bought […]
This is the second of a two part series. Part I discussed proxy voting at Savings Plus, as compared with at CalPERS. CalHR’s Current RFP for Savings Plus CalHR recently released a Request for Proposal (RFP 700-14-01) seeking bids for investment management services for Savings Plus. Unfortunately, the RFP fails to require Savings Plus participants be informed […]
Most California State employees and retirees have their retirement funds invested largely through two vehicles. CalPERS is the nation’s largest public pension, with almost $300B in assets. Many employees also have smaller amounts invested in CalHR‘s Savings Plus program, with assets of $10B. Both vehicles invest a large proportion of their funds in corporate stock, […]
Guest post from Shriram Subramanian, founder of InGovern Research Services with the objective of facilitating shareholder activism by institutional investors and thereby enhancing corporate governance in India. Proxy Advisory Services, Corporate Governance Research, Risk Monitoring, and Proxy Services. India’s SEBI, through a circular dated March 24th, 2014, released a new set of disclosure guidelines to be followed by mutual funds. These […]
Procter and Gamble $PG is one of the stocks in my portfolio. Their annual meeting is coming up on 10/8/2013. ProxyDemocracy.org had collected the votes of three funds when I checked on 10/1/2013. I voted with management 60% of the time. View Proxy Statement. Warning: Be sure to vote each item on the proxy. Any items left blank are voted in […]
UK institutional shareholders will be forced to declare how they vote at company annual general meetings (AGMs) if the current governing Labor Party wins the general election on May 6. In addition, it wants a higher threshold of investor support for takeovers: two-thirds of shareholders. (UK shareholders to be forced to reveal votes if Labour […]