New Podcast: Carl Hagberg on Lessons From the 2022 Proxy Season on TheCorporateCounsel.net
Carl Hagberg has chaired and run CT Hagberg LLC since 1992, which helps companies optimize their spending on individual investors and on investor relations programs in general. Carl also heads a team of 50 Independent Inspector of Elections - who, through June 2022,...
Mid-Year Notes On Big 2022 Meeting Trends …Straight From The Meeting Front
May used to be the “old April” for shareholder meetings - but June tied with May this year in our own count, with June meetings rising an astonishing 32.5% vs. 2021. Readers have been asking, “What’s going on here, and why? Ten years or so ago, the end of April marked...
The All-Important Master Ballot: What Is It? Why Do You Need To Sign It In Advance? – And What It Should Say – And Do
“Why do we need to have a Master Ballot for our Shareholder Meetings - and what exactly does it do?” This has been the most common question our Inspectors of Election have been hearing from clients by far - along with an intimately related and equally important one;...
How And When To Properly Open And Close The Polls
Over the last two years a mini-debate broke out sporadically over LinkedIn on how best to manage the opening and closing of the polls. Many activist investors felt that they should remain open until after the general Q&A period - and ideally, until the very end of...
A Few More Observations From The 2022 Meeting Battlefront – And Some “Problem Areas” To Note
The problem of “meeting congestion” on the busiest meeting dates continues to be a growing issue for issuers - and for their key suppliers: We predict that issuers will increasingly have to vie for favorable meeting dates and times, since at best, there are only eight...
Morrow Sodali Celebrates 50 Year Anniversary By “Building Together”
The OPTIMIZER interviews Adam Frederick, Global President, Bill Ultan, Managing Director – Corporate Governance and Greg Reppucci, Senior Director– Sustainability & Corporate Governance Through a combination of savvy strategic acquisitions and a continued focus on...
Will ‘Big Brother’ Really Be Looking At Your VSMs This Year?
We have been reporting on comments from ISS - and from several large investors as well - that they would be monitoring Virtual Shareholder Meetings to assure that shareholders will have a meaningful chance to ask questions - and to “engage in a dialogue with...
When Pigs Fly
Ever hear this old expression, to indicate a totally unlikely event? Well damned, if pigs aren’t indeed flying high - on the proxy voting front! More kudos to Liz Dunshee for reporting that activist investor Carl Icahn’s fight for the rights of pregnant pigs not to be...
The 2022 Season Starts Out With A Big Bang
As Liz Dunshee reported in her March 13 blog, “This voting outcome arrives at the same time that the UN Environment Assembly has agreed to negotiate a legally binding treaty to tackle plastics, which many are calling the next ‘Paris Accord.’ That comparison is...
Are VSMs “On The Wane” As ISS Asserts?
Not by our reckoning: After reading the ISS assessment in their quarterly update, we went straight to the books - and to our own records of 2022 Shareholder Meetings scheduled as of April 1, 2022. That day, we had 480 meetings booked where our team of Inspectors were...
