Nov 2, 2024 | 2024, Annual Meetings, Issues, Q3
WILL BAD AUDITOR GRADES SPILL OVER TO YOUR AGM? PREPARE NOW, WE SAY We were greatly encouraged by remarks from the recently reorganized PCAOB board leadership promising much greater scrutiny of public company auditors and a much stronger focus on the number of audit...
Nov 2, 2024 | 2024, Issues, Q3
Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to Citi CEO Jane Fraser as she struggles to rein-in the wild and reckless horse that Citi had become after more than a decade of ‘deferred maintenance’ on its key operating systems and their internal controls. But OUCH! As...
Nov 2, 2024 | Annual Meetings, Issues, Q3
A truly Blue-Ribbon Panel of Experts, Chaired by Broc Romanek, hits the streets just as public companies begin to jumpstart their AGM pre-planning activities and, ideally, to anticipate, and proactively address the most important issues that will be on the minds of...
Sep 12, 2024 | 2024, Issues, Q2
We are huge fans of stock splits (forward splits, that is) for a lot of reasons. We realized that we last wrote about them ten years ago, when there was a sudden upsurge, much like we are seeing now – like at Nvidia (10 for 1) Walmart (3 for 1) and Chipotle with a...
Jul 30, 2024 | Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues, Q2, Virtual Meetings
INVESTORS DON’T CARE ABOUT “TOO-HIGH CEO PAY” – At least as long as they themselves are in the black – witness the strong support the move to have shareholders ratify Elon Musk’s massive award of options racked up after a Delaware judge ruled it was wrongly awarded by...
Jul 30, 2024 | 2024, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues, Q2, Virtual Meetings
As most readers know, we think, our ‘sister company’ – CT Hagberg LLC - fields a team of 45 expert Inspectors of Election who, through July, will have served at well over 500 companies. This – plus your two editors’ own stock portfolios – causes us to monitor over 700...
Jul 30, 2024 | 2024, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues, Q2, Virtual Meetings
The Top-Two 2024 VMs – A Two-Way Tie Between Citi And Verizon AT CITIGROUP – A WELL-RUN, HIGHLY ENGAGING AND INFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE…We were especially anxious to tune in the Citigroup VSM this year because we are huge fans of CEO Jane Fraser and continue to bet that...
May 21, 2024 | 2024, Featured, Investor Relations, Issues, Q1
We have been writing about the drop in retail investor voting ever since the Notice and Access model went into effect. We have no beef with the IDEA behind the “model” – which has saved literally billions of dollars for issuers – but we can see that it has become a...
May 21, 2024 | 2024, Activist Investors, Featured, Issues, Q1
Activist investor Michael Levin and the editor of The Activist Investor (TAI) - inspired by the Tesla-proposed settlement of Musk’s comp-case to allow a (non-binding) vote on DIRECTOR COMPENSATION has since filed binding bylaw proposals to require shareholder approval...
May 21, 2024 | 2024, Featured, Issues, Proxy, Q1
Initially, we were sort of on board with the lawsuits Exxon filed against two shareholder proponents to ‘teach them a lesson’ to be more thoughtful about filing shareholder proposals. And yes, we are very much in sympathy with the idea that there are way too many...
May 2, 2024 | 2024, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues, Q1
The Walt Disney Company released the official vote counts on April 4th from its 2024 meeting of shareholders held April 3rd - much faster than it usually takes to do so, we were happy to note - where they said “investors decisively defeated” the campaign by activist...
Feb 9, 2024 | 2023, 2023 Q4, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues
The 2024 Annual Meeting Season and the Big-Company Proxy Fight Season is off to a roaring start – with Nelson Peltz of Trian back yet again at Disney with a big new backer, major investor Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, whom Disney fired not so long aga… And even before...
Feb 9, 2024 | 2023, 2023 Q4, Featured, Issues, Proxy
Shareholder Vote Exchange, which was featured in a January 22 WSJ article, was started in 2021 by Preston Yadegar, 25 years old, a 2020 BU graduate whose venture has been funded so far by friends and family but who says that talks are underway with potential...
Feb 9, 2024 | 2023, 2023 Q4, Featured, Issues, Transfer Agents
Five events in late 2023 startled us into realizing that most Transfer Agents seem to be in a big heap of trouble these days: The first and second were the two calls we received - one about bad TA service and one about bad TA behavior – described in detail elsewhere...
Oct 21, 2023 | 2023 Q3, People
I first met Bob in 1985, when he was with IECA - the Independent Election Corporation of America – when he came to call on us at the old Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company to explain what the newly formed IECA was all about. His smiling face, his calm, thoughtful and...
Oct 19, 2023 | 2023 Q4, Annual Meetings, Featured, Investor Relations, Issues, Virtual Meetings
©2023 by Carl T. Hagberg and Associates. All rights reserved. This publication may not be copied or made available to readers over the Internet without the express permission of the copyright holder. (The letter below can be generic - or personalized with issuers’...
Oct 19, 2023 | 2023 Q3, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues
Expectations of directors are increasing. Fewer directors stood for election this past season (23,829) than in 2022 season, but more failed to attain majority support (654) than at any time in the last 5 years. Support has declined for Say-on-Pay. 131 say-on-pay...
Aug 1, 2023 | 2023, 2023 Q2, Abandoned Property, Featured, Issues
Here’s an email we got recently from Jen Borden – whom we consider to be the world’s top expert on all things concerning unclaimed property. It updates the article she did for our year-end magazine, 2022 Unclaimed Property Year-End Round Up, and provides some truly...
Jul 28, 2023 | 2023, 2023 Q2, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues
The 2023 Shareholder Meeting Season to date has been “one for the books” for sure – and we are happy to report that most of the predictions and early warnings we posted in late 2022 and early 2023 were very much on the money: While there has been a modest return to...
Jul 28, 2023 | 2023, Annual Meetings, Issues
In our last issue we recommended that readers take time to review what we found to be the “Most Engaging” Shareholder Meeting Materials of the 70-odd sets we reviewed with care - and we promised to disclose the MOST CONVINCING EXAMPLES OF CORPORATE RESPONSES to...
Jul 28, 2023 | 2023, 2023 Q2, Annual Meetings, Issues
As noted here earlier, there was a very noticeable decline in the number of companies that had to adjourn their Shareholder Meetings in first-half 2023 for lack of a quorum on the appointed date and time. At two of the Meetings where our Inspectors of Election served,...
Apr 27, 2023 | 2023, 2023 Q1, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues, Proxy
Through mid-April we’ve noted at least three instances where the Audit Firm’s name was omitted in both the summary of items on the ballot in the Proxy Statement – and on the Proxy Card itself. This is a totally unacceptable thing to do in our opinion – and makes us...
Apr 27, 2023 | 2023, 2023 Q1, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues, Proxy
PEPSICO’s ANNUAL REPORT - Tops to date – and one of the two or three most engaging sets of reports over our 30+ years of reviewing proxy materials. Packed FULL of engaging soundbites, like the theme – “Winning with pep+” (which we have been doing for 30+ years) plus...
Apr 27, 2023 | 2023, 2023 Q1, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues
Big and important news from Broadridge’s 5th annual CX [Customer Experience, we figured out] and Communications Consumer Insights report, “capturing the responses of 4,000+ consumers across North America regarding their preferences for different communication...
Apr 27, 2023 | 2023, 2023 Q1, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues
Your editor-in-chief was pleased to be part of an all-star panel put together by CCR in late March on Conduct of the Annual Meeting, where he offered his Top-Tips to Assure Security at the Annual Meeting, freshly revised in light of the devilishly well-planned and...
