Stop Doing Annual Board Evaluations!
Start conducting board performance reviews that elicit helpful advice on how the board might work better. The Governance Solutions Group is a board advisory practice with a focus on engaging directors in the annual board assessment process and guiding strategic...
Major Shifts In Transfer Agency Market Share: Many More Developments To Come
As you will see from the chart below, we estimate that the transfer agency market - measured by shareholder records maintained - dropped by roughly 5% between our last estimates in 2017 vs. year-end 2019… producing some very interesting shifts in market share at...
Shareholder Records Retention: The Devil’s in the Details
By Merrill B. Stone & Stephanie W. Estey We all can be a little forgetful. For example, most of us who wear glasses seem to misplace them with an annoying degree of regularity. We tear up the house, going from room to room only to find them, quite literally, right...
How Is Your “Statement Of Corporate Purpose” Shaping Up? Two Good Sources To Check Into For Guidance…
You would not be doing all of your 2020 homework without thinking about incorporating some kind of statement about your “Corporate Purpose” into your Annual Report, following all the publicity the Business Roundtable got with its statement on the importance of having...
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...
