Annual Meeting Prep: Top Tips on What to Do Now to Get Set for 2020
Assess where your company is likely to stand at year end vs. peers: If you are not in the top-tenth-percentile performance wise, you are especially vulnerable to (a) getting shareholder proposals and (b) to getting large numbers in favor of them and (c) to getting...
The Optimizer’s “View From the Snake-Pit” on the 2019 Meeting Season
Most of our readers are being inundated by proxy season reviews, we know – and maybe some are sick of them by now. But given our long-term success at spotting trends you need to watch – plus the unique vantage point that comes from our Inspector of Elections business, where we and our Associates attend nearly 500 shareholder and membership association meetings each year – including a few proxy fights to boot – we feel obliged to weigh-in as usual, with our “view from the snake-pit” in 2019 and the year ahead.
The Clash of the Hesters
We were startled to read the impassioned and rather impetuous - and basically fact-free remarks - on the ESG scene by SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce, speaking before the American Enterprise Institute - analogizing the trend toward branding company ESG standards as...
On the Proxy Solicitation and Advisory Scene
EQ hires Margaret (Peggy) O’Keefe as Managing Director, Corporate Governance, to beef up its new proxy business: “Peggy brings more than 20 years of experience to EQ. Her experience in corporate governance and executive compensation consulting and research will...
On the Transfer Agency Scene
Huge news at Computershare - the acquisition in April of the Microsoft transfer agency business. As we write, Microsoft is the largest company in the world by market-cap - a major leader in the high-tech world, of course, which has, so far, and permanently we’d hope,...
Cocal-Cola Re-Institutes “Quarterly Reports to Shareholders” – In A Modern Way
We were delighted to get this link to the Coca Cola Quarterly Report to Shareholders from Karen Danielson, Coke’s incomparable Shareholder Services Manager, following the SSA discussion on “Better Communications With Shareholders.” ...
Our Top Tips on Creating Written Materials That Shareholders Will Read – And Act On
Your editor-in-chief was pleased to be part of a panel at the SSA’s annual conference in July on “Communicating Effectively with Shareholders” where he focused on writing and design tips, based on his many years as a writer, designer, sender and recipient of...
More News: Are Three Big Index Funds on Track to 34% of All Shares Voted by 2030?
Research by Lucian A. Bebchuk, Harvard Law School, and Scott Hirst, Boston University School of Law, and reported in the Stinson Corporate & Securities Law Blog, indicates that “three key index fund advisors could cast 34% of votes in the next decade at S&P...
More Meeting News to Ponder: Three Individual Investors Submitted 37% of the 2019 Proposals Submitted by the Top-Ten Poponents
It’s easy to understand why issuers get upset about “gadflies” - and would like to see the ownership thresholds increased for submissions of shareholder proposals - and to see the actual vote-getting totals thresholds increased substantially for re-submissions. As the...
The Best, Worst and Weirdest Things We’ve Seen in the 2019 Meeting Season to Date
LET’S PUT THE WORST BEHIND US FIRST: The return of those perfectly awful “floor votes” - led this season by the equally awful “Burn More Coal” lobby at meetings of at least four electric utility companies. We’ve warned annually about the foolishness of allowing...
