And Don’t Help The Corporate Cause At All… In Their Actual And “Model Responses” To Proposed Changes In The “Broker May Vote” Rule… Basically Flicking A Finger At The NYSE And Its Proxy Rule Committee
Your editor had the honor to serve as the Inspector of Election at Intel’s 2009 annual meeting, the first “virtual annual meeting” ever.
The SEC – which was expected to vote on Direct Access to the corporate proxy machinery for the purpose of nominating director candidates on Nov. 8th, announced in early October that it would delay a vote on the final rules until early 2010 – to be sure that they would “get itright.”
We’ve been expecting to have at least one really big story about Transfer Agency consolidation for well over six months now. But in the meanwhile, we’ve been amazed at how many questions we’ve been getting from issuers about “small transfer agents”.
As Y2k09 came to an end, it was quite an unpleasant shock for boosters of long-term investing like us to realize that for most individual investors – especially those who faithfully followed a “buy and hold” approach – the entire decade of the 2000s came to naught…and to NOUGHT – to a big fat zero .
We continue to be amazed by the number of corporate citizens – and by the number of their law firms and other advisors too – who are still confused about Notice and Access.
This is the beginning of a totally new approach to Annual Meetings, and one that will ultimately result in a totally new A-M paradigm, we think.
If you missed the original webcast on this subject, sponsored by The Capital Markets Board, you can hear it on our website
It did not take a smart reporter very long to sniff out a problem with the way Apple reported its 2009 voting results – especially with regard to the “widely watched” Say on Pay proposal, which Apple reported had been defeated.
The first commandment when it comes to tabulating and reporting Meeting results is this: “Always prove every item to the Quorum”
Another of our very favorite topics has jumped to the forefront this season: We’ve been warning year after year about the need to be sure that you have the proper authority to adjourn your annual or special meeting…
When announcing results at the meeting, the best practice is to stick tightly to the numbers.
Our Top “Practical Tips” On What To Do… To Head-Off A Potentially Career-Ending Snafu
Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, you know of course that NYSE Rule 452, aka the “broker-may-vote rule”, aka the “ten-day-rule”
For openers, how about 100+ proposals for shareholders to have a “say on pay”?
The season opened with a big loud bang, when Bank of America’s chairman Ken Lewis was stripped of his chairmanship by a binding vote to separate the Chairman and CEO roles.
We came away from the Society’s annual conference almost 100% certain that there would be “proxy access” in time for the 2010 meeting season.
A Delaware court ruled that a binding-bylaw proposal that would prohibit the company from seating any director who failed to achieve a majority vote in an uncontested election had to be included on the ballot at Trico Marine Corporation…
We Also Urge The SEC To Urgently Fix The Scandalous Defects In Our Old And Badly Broken “Proxy Plumbing” Systems Before Forging Ahead… And Tell Them How To Do It
An Interview with Eric van Aalst and Kevin Pezien of CITCO
In our last issue we opined that a Pay-Czar was “probably NOT a good thing”…and his recent actions have proven us right
Recent developments have underscored the value of “staying connected” to shareholders in an attempt to prevent escheatment or preserve the immunity granted by states when a corporation or its transfer agent escheats securities to a state as unclaimed property.
