Transformations in the Transfer Agency World
An Update on the Number-One Question Your Editors Get: “What’s Up With All Those Transfer Agents?” The Transfer Agency industry, as most long-term readers know, has been undergoing a rapid and rather massive transformation for well over a decade now. The latest view...
Maybe the Biggest Breakthrough Ever, We Say, To Increase Retail Investor Voting
In mid-November, Broadridge Financial Solutions announced that big retail broker Raymond James Financial is all set to effect “mobile integration of shareholder voting...to enhance the investor experience...and simplify shareholder voting” for the upcoming...
The Top-Three Things You Should Fear to Hear at Your 2019 Meeting of Shareholders
If there is one thing that will strike fear into the heart and mind of an unprepared Meeting-Chair, it is this question from the floor: “Who counted those votes, Madam Chairman”…and secondly, “how do we know the results are correct?” Your editor-in-chief has heard...
Star Journalists Celebrate the End of Annual Meeting Season
Phong Bui, co-founder of art and culture journal The Brooklyn Rail, M-C Jerry Saltz, Pulitzer Prize winning writer and Senior Art Critic at New York Magazine - and world-renowned journalist Jane Pauley, the evening's honoree - flanked by two of the Benefit Co-chairs,...
Comments on the Proxy Process in Advance of the SEC’s November 15 ‘Roundtable
In this letter, I will try to focus primarily on Over-Voting and Under-Voting, “Empty Voting,” Technology and Innovation (where I have reconsidered a few of my 2010 comments) and, very briefly, on Improving Retail Shareholder Participation. Brent J. Fields,...
THE BIGGEST AND BEST THING WE SAW THIS SEASON: A 41% INCREASE IN RETAIL INVESTOR VOTING PARTICIPATION…FOLLOWING AN 8% INCREASE LAST YEAR… AT BANK of AMERICA
Given the slow but steady falloff in individual investor voting that we have been witnessing since the 1970s, it’s hard for us to overstate what a huge and important development this is. We were mightily impressed with last year’s addition of 50,000 new retail voters,...
People: 2018Q2
Abby Cowart has resigned as Executive Director of the Shareholder Services Association (SSA) as of June 13, 2018, after a highly successful three-year tenure, marked by the launch of a Certification Program for Shareholder Relations Professionals and vigorous new...
On the Supplier Scene: 2018Q2
Computershare is set to purchase Equatex – “a Zurich based employee share plans administrator with a strong business across Europe [whose] 220+ employees provide a range of employee share plans administration solutions for over 160 clients…
AUDITOR RATIFICATION…THE NEXT BIG THING IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE? WE HAVE A BETTER IDEA
We have been saying for five or more years now that treating the vote on ratifying the selection of auditors as a “routine matter” is increasingly absurd, in light of the seemingly never-improving and clearly unsatisfactory number of audit failures reported each year by the PCAOB.
ONCE OVER IN APRIL, SHAREHOLDER MEETINGS ARE YEAR-ROUND EVENTS THESE DAYS
Ten years or so ago, when most public companies used the calendar-year as their fiscal year, virtually 100% of shareholder meetings were over by April 31st.
