A Quick Look At VSMs – A Shout-Out To Microsoft – And An Oddball Non-VSM Event To Avoid
Virtual Shareholder Meetings (VSMs) continue to gain traction - perhaps a tiny bit slower than in previous years - but this year, a seminal event we say; the successful adoption by Microsoft of a Virtual-Only Shareholder Meeting. We were skeptical about their ability...
It’s Time To Smell The Coffee, Do Your Math – And To Very Carefully Count The House On Upcoming Proxy Votes
Every year around this time we remind readers that they should get an extra-early “jump” on planning for their Annual Meeting. And we offer our top-three tips on avoiding unexpected - and unwanted - and career-threatening meeting outcomes. Here they are: Never be...
20 Developments To Watch – And To Act On – As You Prepare For 2020
A pressing need to “wake up, smell the coffee, do your math and count the house carefully” re: 2020 proxy issues. A new need to re-visit and re-articulate “the purpose of the corporation” in response to the recent Business Roundtable and Council of Institutional...
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...
