People: 2018Q4

Donna Ackerly, who had, for many years, been one of the busiest, most popular and most client-oriented people at Georgeson, has signed-on as a Senior Vice President - Business Development at Laurel Hill Advisors. We are so happy for Donna, and for Laurel Hill as well, and we wish her all our best!

Joseph B. (Jake) Amsbary, Jr. recently moved on from UPS in Atlanta to become the Vice President and Corporate Secretary of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. in Deerfield, IL. A great move for Jake, who is also the current Chair-Elect of the Society for Corporate Governance - and a great move for Walgreens Boots!

Tom Cronin, who is one of the best-connected people anywhere in the realm of “community oriented” public companies where proxy fights tend to break out - like regional banks and family-founded companies where the “third generation” of owners often have their own ideas on how the firm should be run - has left proxy solicitor Laurel Hill for EQ - which plans to add “Information Agency” services - and likely, we’d guess,  full-blown proxy solicitation services too, down the road - to its list of offerings.

Evelyn Y. Davis, gadfly extraordinaire and self-styled “Queen of the Corporate Jungle” passed away in November at the age of 89. For 50 years she was one of the most complex, contentious, self-centered - and in many ways one of the saddest people on the corporate scene. But ultimately, she became one of the most highly successful people on the corporate governance front, and something of a financial success to boot.

Your senior editor first encountered her at the very beginning of her long career, and regularly thereafter, until she retired from the scene a few years ago. He has written down some of the less-known, and a few never-before-printed EYD stories for the OPTIMIZER’s History section, which can be found in our 2019 special supplement.

Tom Kies, the popular and long-running industry veteran of firms like Laurel Hill Advisors, where he was a co-founder, Georgeson, Computershare, D.F. King and Morrow & Co. (and, full disclosure, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, where your senior-editor recruited him in 1987 to start the first ever T-A-run proxy solicitation and stock-watch unit) has left AST, where he will become an “industry consultant”…until his non-compete runs out, we’d guess.  We’re sure there is more to come here…so watch this space…

Ellen Philip, who founded Ellen Philip Associates 40 years ago - which we consider to be the nation’s premiere provider of Employee Plan Voting Services - was presented with the Tony Fireman Award - the Shareholder Services Association’s highest honor - at their holiday luncheon in December. No one in the SSA is more deserving of this award than Ellen. She - and her firm - epitomize the ideals cited on the award: “Character, Integrity, Commitment, Leadership.” In 1979 Ellen became one of the very first female members of the old Corporate Transfer Agents Association, or CTA, which evolved into today’s SSA, and she has been a trusted advisor, mentor and friend to more SSA members than we can count.  Well done! Three cheers! 

In a wonderful related development, the SSA planned to donate its half of the traditional 50-50 raffle to NYC non-profit Fountain House - the world’s leading provider of supportive services to people with serious mental illnesses - in Ellen’s honor:  Regular readers will recall that twenty years ago, Ellen and her partner Cal Donly decided to turn their famously well attended Christmas party into “A party with a purpose” - that would raise funds for Fountain House’s Fountain Gallery. To date, the “End of Annual Meeting Celebration” has raised over $1 million from members of the financial services community to support member-artists who live with, and succeed in spite of serious mental health issues. Three years ago, Ellen and Cal were awarded the Esther Montanez Leadership Award for their support of Fountain House Gallery and its member artists. When the winner of the second 50% was drawn, winner Brian Permenter - who had attended the Celebration just a few weeks before,  where he was among the donors, and where his company, Computershare-Georgeson has been among the sponsors for 20 years - immediately donated the other $510 to Fountain House as well. What a great guy!  And…a holiday miracle…the $1,020 magically turned into $2,040 - thanks to an anonymous donor who matched every donation made to Fountain House in December dollar-for-dollar…up to $100,000.

On a sad note, Pepper, the Ellen Philip Associates mascot - and perhaps the most famous rabbit in the world, after Bugs Bunny - passed away peacefully at year-end, at the amazing age of 13. Pepper was better known in some ways than Ellen herself. Last year, we got a call from a reader in the U.K. who was looking for “someone who is an expert in employee-plan recordkeeping…I can’t remember her name, but she had a rabbit.” When it came to producing business, Pepper was not only a steady generator of inquiries, but she was an infallible predictor of the outcomes. “If people started asking about Pepper, and talking about their own pets, we knew we had the job,” Ellen said. “And whenever we had a meeting at the office, people would ask, “What can we bring for Pepper? - and they would come with a bunch of parsley or some carrots with the tops still on.” Your editors’ most vivid memory of Pepper was the major crush she had on the UPS guy. The moment he came through the door, the normally shy Pepper would make a bee-line for him, and joyfully rub against his legs. RIP, Pepper…we will miss you.

Anne Sheehan, who recently retired as Director of Corporate Governance at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) has joined PJT Camberview, a unit of PJT Partners, as a Senior Advisor. Anne, who is the current Chairman of the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee, is one of the most accomplished people in the corporate governance world: She served two terms as the Chair of the Council of Institutional Investors, was a board member of the NASDAQ Listing Council and as a member of the International Corporate Governance Network. She is a founder of the Investor Stewardship Group, serves on the Advisory Board of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware and has been named one of the 100 most influential people in corporate governance by Directorship magazine.

Patrick Tracey - one of the best-known and best-liked public figures in the transfer agency space, and a former president of NIRI-NY - has left Computershare to join Carta - a relative newcomer to the T-A world, but already a big provider of recordkeeping services to the very picky private-company universe, where founding families - and many times, an entire workforce of share-owners - still place a high value on having top-flight shareholder recordkeeping and related functions. (More full disclosure; your editor-in-chief hired Pat away from Morrow & Co. - way back in the 1970s - to help launch a “de-mutualization business” as mutual savings associations, and later, mutually owned insurance companies went public on a grand scale - granting stock to millions of depositors, borrowers and insurance policy owners in the process - and where we went from being very-late-entrants to becoming the market-leader in an incredibly short span of time.) A big win for Carta, for sure.