Some Notes From The Virtual-Meeting Front
So far this season, there have been 20 “Virtual Shareholder Meetings”: About half were “totally virtual meetings” – held totally in cyberspace – and the rest were so-called “hybrid virtual meetings”
A Recordbreaking Number Of Glitches Cross Our Desk In The Spring 2010 Annual Meeting Season
Indicative, We Think, Of A Serious Level Of “Inattention To Details” And A Serious Industry Brain-Drain
Reaching Out To Investors Via The Proxy Statement
The Optimizer Interviews Dannette Smith, Secretary To The Board Of Unitedhealth Group, Incorporated, The Winner Of Corporate Secretary Magazine’s 2010 Award For Best Proxy Statement
Laurel Hill Advisory Group
An Interview With Dr. William J. Catacosinos, Chairman Of Laurel Hill Advisory Group, LLC And His Senior Colleagues
Key Industry Organizations Totally Miss The Point, We Say… And Don’T Help The Corporate Cause At All…
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
A First-Hand Report From The Intel “Virtual Annual Meeting”… And A Heads Up On The Broadridge Virtual Meeting In November
Your editor had the honor to serve as the Inspector of Election at Intel’s 2009 annual meeting, the first “virtual annual meeting” ever.
Issuers Get A Stay Of Execution On Direct Proxy Access… But It’s Coming To Our Neighborhood Soon, We Guarantee:
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.”
In The Blooper Of The Year, Apple Gets Caught Counting Abstentions As “Votes No” On Say On Pay
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.
A Quick Primer On Tabulating And Reporting Voting Results
The first commandment when it comes to tabulating and reporting Meeting results is this: “Always prove every item to the Quorum”
A Few “Practice Points” On Reporting Results
When announcing results at the meeting, the best practice is to stick tightly to the numbers.
Coping With The Loss Of The Broker Vote …And The Potential 50% Decline In The Individual Investor Vote, If You Fail To Use The N&A Model Wisely
Our Top “Practical Tips” On What To Do… To Head-Off A Potentially Career-Ending Snafu
Coping With The Loss Of The Broker Vote: Our Top-Ten “Strategic Tips” On What You Should Be Doing…. Now
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”
The 2009 Proxy Season Overview: Much Bad Sailing… But Batten Down The Hatches For Worse Weather In 2010
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.
Investor Access To The Director Nominating And Voting Machinery: A Certainty For 2010?
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 Few New Developments To Watch That Crossed Our Path This 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…
Our Last-Ditch Effort To Prevent The Federalization Of Shareholder Meetings
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
What’s The Climate For The SEC Online Proxy Rules? Hot, Hot, Hot.
By Rhoda Anderson, President, Rhoda Anderson Associates, and Co-Founder, EZOnlineDocuments It doesn’t seem so hard these days to forecast the climate at the SEC. With the financial “tsunami” of last year and an ongoing technology front fast moving in, it seems to be...Commissioner To The SEC On Notice & Access – “Fix It Or Scrap It!” Shouldn’t It Be: “Beneficial Shareholder Voting – Fix It First”?
By T.L. Montrone, Chairman, President and CEO of Registrar and Transfer Company The SEC solicited comments on ways to improve Notice and Access (“N&A”) through a proposed rule-making published earlier this year. Concerned with the drastically reduced retail...Proxy Management – At Its Best
An Interview With Michael Mackey, Managing Partner, Alliance Advisors, LLC
King Of The Community Proxy Fight
An Interview With Artie Regan Of Regan & Associates, Inc.
An Insider’s Perspective: How To Avoid A Yahoo-Like Tabulation Nightmare
This interview first appeared in the Fall edition of Broc Romanek’s new publication, InvestorRelationships.com, which also covered another important “hot topic” in its inaugural issue, with a “Roadmap to Regulation FD under the SEC’s new website guidance”.
Our Top-Ten Tips For Proofreading Your Annual Report And Proxy Materials… Plus Five New Tips For Today’s Web-Based Environment
Wow, we noticed… it’s been 10 years since we listed our top-ten proofreading tips… tips which several readers told us they had tacked to their walls.
Goodbye Edgar Brick Road SEC’s Mandate For Posting Proxy Documents Online Brings Benefits… But Heed These Cautions
By Rhoda Anderson, President, Rhoda Anderson Associates, and Co-Founder, EZOnlineDocuments
A Turnkey Solution For The Proxy Process
An Interview with Michael Mackey, Managing Partner, Alliance Advisors, LLC
For Laurel Hill, There Is No Denying That The Times Have Changed. And There Is Also No Denying That The Role Of The Proxy Solicitor Has Most Definitely Changed
An Interview with Tom Kies and John Siemann, Partners at Laurel Hill Advisory Group, LLC
