Audits & Opportunities
Unclaimed Property Compliance Update. A review of the current unclaimed property enforcement environment and recent legislative developments.
Huge News On The Abandoned Property Front
As we just learned at the SSA conference in July, a sweeping re-draft of the so-called Uniform Abandoned Property Act has been approved, that would, among other things, call for state treasurers to wait at least three years before selling any “underlying securities” deemed abandoned…
Insights on some of the most important tools and skill-sets that public companies need to have at the ready as we head into the 2017 proxy season…
Interview with Bruce Goldfarb, President & CEO of Okapi Partners
Improve Your Retail Vote
Interview with Ellen Philip, ELLEN PHILIP Associates The Optimizer’s Editor In Chief Interviews Ellen Philip of Ellen Philip Associates “Among the first things that issuers need to do this year, is to step back a bit, take a hard, fresh, numbers-oriented look at...Yikes – They’re Back, As Warned: Last-Minute Proxy Fights… And Supposedly “Irrevocable” Proxies
And Those Dangerous “Floor Votes” Too… Very Badly Advised!
Proxy Statements Transitioning From Compliance To Communications-Focused Documents
By Ron Schneider, Director, Corporate Governance Services, RR Donnelley
Another Proxy Voting Scam – And The Scamsters – Revealed
SCAMSTERS MASQUERADING AS INVESTORS MANUFACTURE PROXY VOTES IN A FAILED AT EMPT TO SEAL A DEAL…THE BIG SURPRISE? NOTHING REALLY NEW HERE: WHO’S WATCHING THE PROXY BIZ ANYWAY?
Our Top Takeaways From The Spring 2015 Annual Meeting Season
The biggest takeaway, by far, is how much smooth sailing those proxy access proposals with 3% ownership and 3-year holding periods encountered… pretty much as we predicted.
The Best, The Worst… And The Weirdest Annual Meeting Developments We Saw This Spring
Let’s lead off on a high note, with some of the best meetings your editor attended – and where there were some nice innovations worth passing along:
Our Promised Checklist Of The Best Practices To Gear Up Early For Your Annual Meeting of Shareholders
For the majority of our readers, their annual meetings are six months or more away as we write this…
Holy Land Priciples Seem Cool But Generate Lots Of Heat At Shareholder Meetings: Coming Soon To 500+ Companies
Nine shareholder resolutions will come to a vote in 2016 on The Holy Land Principles – “an 8-point corporate code of conduct for American companies doing business in Israel-Palestine” according to a press release signed by the fiery Irish-American priest and preacher, Father Sean Mc Manus.
Some Bests (Microsoft, Chevron And Hasbro) And Worsts (“The VWAPS Of G-E”) On The 2015 Shareholder Engagement And Meeting Materials Scenes
Regular readers are well aware, we hope, of our frustration with the overall presentations of shareholder meeting and voting materials over the web.
Activists And Other “Financial Engineers” Drive M&A And Restructuring Acivities To Alltime Highs As We Get Set For The 2016 Annual Meeting Season
An all-time record number of “deals” were announced in 2015 – falling just shy of the $5 trillion mark, at $4.7 trillion.
Transfer Agent Liabilities: Under-Estimate Them At Your Peril
Our Top Tips On Protecting Your Company From T-A-Related Liabilities: Doing It Yourself? Bad Advice!
Transfer Agent Market Share Updates Show Major Shrinkage In The Registered Holder Universe
Much More Shrinkage Still To Come, We Say
Direct Stock Purchase And Dividend Reinvestment Plans
We Guarantee That Your Company Will Benefit From A Fresh And Careful Re-Look… And Maybe A Major Makeover… And If You Don’t Have One, You Should Take A Look At That Too
BofA Aces The Referendum On A Combined Chairman/CEO
A Few Important Take-Aways For Issuers – And A Few “Shades Of The Bad Old Days” Worth Noting
Early Returns From The 2015 Meeting Season: Activists Rev Their Motors At Full Speed
Many Seminal Developments To Watch… And Our Comments On Bad Advice… And Good
New Action Expected In The Drive For “Universal Ballots”: An SEC “Tilt” To Favor Activism? We Say It Does Not
“SEC Chief Tilts Again to Activists” the WSJ headline screamed, on page-1 of the June 26 Money & Investing section, reporting on Chairman Mary Jo Wight’s remarks at the Society of Corporate Secretaries conference where she endorsed the universal ballot idea, and urged companies to adopt one voluntarily in a proxy fight…”
A Quick P.S. On The Much-Watched Dust-Up With Activist Investors at DuPont
Another Of The Optimizer’s Governance Predictions Comes Through… In A Flash
Some Major Suppliers… A Major Bank… And An Important Regulator Raise The Ante Big-Time On “Cybersecurity At One’s Suppliers”
But A Surprising Number Of Companies Dig-In Their Heels About Reviewing And Expanding Their Internal Control Environment… Do Not Be One Of Them… Or Use One Of Them, We Warn
Scripophily: Back With A Vengeance… Do You Know Where Your Old Stock Certificates Really Are? Should You Care?
It’s been about ten years now since we last wrote about scripophily – the semi-secret, sometimes all-consuming and, all too often, totally illicit love for old stock certificates.
Our Best New Ideas To Attract A Cadre Of Solid, Long-Term Investors That Will Create Big Value For Your Company
In our last issue we published some pretty grim statistics about the huge number of individual investors that have given up on owning common stock. We are at the lowest levels since the Depression. And as we write this, the U.S. stock markets are following China’s...Major Shockers Rock The Governance World
Big After-Shocks To Come, And A Major “Raising Of The Bars” Across The Board, We Predict… So Get Ready We love to crow about our long record of predicting “the next big thing in the corporate governance world” - but you sure don’t need a crystal ball this fall to know...
