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...On the Proxy Solicitation and Advisory Scene
EQ hires Margaret (Peggy) O’Keefe as Managing Director, Corporate Governance, to beef up its new proxy business: “Peggy brings more than 20 years of experience to EQ. Her experience in corporate governance and executive compensation consulting and research will...On the Transfer Agency Scene
Huge news at Computershare - the acquisition in April of the Microsoft transfer agency business. As we write, Microsoft is the largest company in the world by market-cap - a major leader in the high-tech world, of course, which has, so far, and permanently we’d hope,...Cocal-Cola Re-Institutes “Quarterly Reports to Shareholders” – In A Modern Way
We were delighted to get this link to the Coca Cola Quarterly Report to Shareholders from Karen Danielson, Coke’s incomparable Shareholder Services Manager, following the SSA discussion on “Better Communications With Shareholders.” ...Our Top Tips on Creating Written Materials That Shareholders Will Read – And Act On
Your editor-in-chief was pleased to be part of a panel at the SSA’s annual conference in July on “Communicating Effectively with Shareholders” where he focused on writing and design tips, based on his many years as a writer, designer, sender and recipient of...More News: Are Three Big Index Funds on Track to 34% of All Shares Voted by 2030?
Research by Lucian A. Bebchuk, Harvard Law School, and Scott Hirst, Boston University School of Law, and reported in the Stinson Corporate & Securities Law Blog, indicates that “three key index fund advisors could cast 34% of votes in the next decade at S&P...More Meeting News to Ponder: Three Individual Investors Submitted 37% of the 2019 Proposals Submitted by the Top-Ten Poponents
It’s easy to understand why issuers get upset about “gadflies” - and would like to see the ownership thresholds increased for submissions of shareholder proposals - and to see the actual vote-getting totals thresholds increased substantially for re-submissions. As the...The Best, Worst and Weirdest Things We’ve Seen in the 2019 Meeting Season to Date
LET’S PUT THE WORST BEHIND US FIRST: The return of those perfectly awful “floor votes” - led this season by the equally awful “Burn More Coal” lobby at meetings of at least four electric utility companies. We’ve warned annually about the foolishness of allowing...Can We Do Away With Paper Dividend Checks? Plus, Our Top 5 Ways to Get Results.
A month or so ago, Liz Dunshee, one of the three wonderful bloggers on the incomparable thecorporatecounsel.net blog, e-mailed the following question to us, that she’d received from a subscriber: “Has anyone implemented plans to eliminate (or reduce) your stock...A Call to Action: Bring Back the “Own Your Share of America” Campaign!
In mid-July, during an open Q&A session your editors attended at the SSA annual conference, this question from a member popped up on the screen: “With the number of public companies declining every year - and with the number of individual investors shrinking every...Evelyn Y. Davis: Gadfly Extraordinaire and Self-Styled “Queen of the Corporate Jungle” Passes Away on November 30, 2018 at the Age of 88
One of the most complex, contentious, egotistical, infuriating and relentless people – and in many ways one of the saddest people on the corporate scene – due, perhaps, to her terrible experiences as a Holocaust survivor, which were rarely mentioned until late in her life…
People: 2019 Q1
George H. Beehler, a longtime printing salesman at Security Bank Note Company – who was lucky enough to retire when stock certificates were still a big business – passed away on March 26 at the age of 92. George was one of the longest-serving members of the old Corporate Transfer Agents Association – and he remained active until fairly recently in its new incarnation as the Shareholder Services Association as well. According to SSA guru Jimmy Smith,
Is Glass Lewis Adding Proxy Solicitation to its Expanding Private “Access” Services?
That’s the allegation from our friend and frequent noisemaker Gary Lutin, following the announcement of a new service, posted to the Harvard Governance Blog by Katherine Rabin, Glass, Lewis & Co., on Sunday, March 31, 2019…just in time for Lutin’s April Fool’s Day re-post and riposte.
Board Portals: Time for a Fresh Look, We Say
Two developments this quarter convinced us that companies should be taking a fresh look at the Board Portals they are using…and how, exactly, Directors are thinking about them…and using them…or not….
Big Transformations in the Employee Stock Ownership World… Including A Quick “Who’s Who” Analysis
We literally jerked to attention when we saw the news on page-one of the WSJ that Morgan Stanley is acquiring Solium Capital, Inc. – a Canadian firm “which manages the stock that employees receive as part of their pay”… for a whopping $900 million … “the largest takeover by any Wall Street firm since the [financial industry] crisis.”
A Few “Early Returns” From the Annual Meeting Front… And Maybe A Late-Breaking Shocker
Let’s start with the potential shocker: Just as we were locking up this issue came news from Vanguard, which is rolling out a new policy to vote in most cases against directors who hold two or more board seats in addition to their own company’s seat…starting now. We haven’t seen firm numbers yet on just how many director candidates will be affected – but we guess there will be a lot.
Transfer Agency Fees: Are You Paying High 20th Century Fees for Low 21st Century Activities … And For Things You Don’t Need?
Right now, most of our readers are up to their eyeballs in Annual Meeting-related activities…So it might seem weird to run this article right now.
An Update on What’s Up – And What’s New – In the Hurley-Burley Transfer Agent World
Ordinarily, we lead off the 1st quarter issue with our “Early Returns” from the Annual Meeting front. But since our last update on the Transfer Agency world in our year-end Special Supplement - focusing on “Transforming Shareholder Relations” - there has been an...THE HOTTEST NEW ISSUES ON ACTIVISTS’ 2019 MEETING AGENDAS
The number-one new issue for issuers to focus on as they prepare for their 2019 proxy disclosures, and their all-important “early engagement” activities is - and we say this with very mixed emotions - your company’s management of “Human Capital.” On the one hand, the...People: 2018Q4
Donna Ackerly, who had, for many years, been one of the busiest, most popular and most client-oriented people at Georgeson, has signed-on as a Senior Vice President - Business Development at Laurel Hill Advisors. We are so happy for Donna, and for Laurel Hill as well,...
