Re-Energizing Your Retail Investor Voters

Every year for at least the past five years we have been trying to highlight some of the many cases we see each year – including most of our annual “Horror Stories” – where a better turnout of the almost-always-supportive retail investor base would have helped companies pass proposals they wanted to pass, defeat proposals they opposed, or provide a more comfortable margin of safety on says-on-pay AND in the many cases we see each year where a lot of voters decide to Vote No on one or two directors, often taking public companies – and the directors themselves – totally by surprise.

So we were gratified when we got an e-mailed video from the NACD – an interview with Broadridge CEO Rich Daly – who explained how, with just a bit of effort, the average company can pick up 10 percentage points toward their quorum of “actual voters” – almost all of which will vote with the management recommendations. (We have posted the interview on our website, under the Featured Advertisers tab)

We also hope that readers read, and pondered our article on companies that were “stratifying out” many of their most loyal and committed voters – and totally losing touch with them in the bargain. We learned something new here too, when a Broadridge expert called to say that YES – we could go to their website and lodge a permanent request to always get hard-copy ARs and proxy materials on ALL of our holdings, regardless of a company’s stratification program.

Our nephew the broker and his staff had been totally unable to help us here…And, the biggest part of the problem?? How could any of them – or any of us shareholders have KNOWN about such an option??? Maybe those “Notices” need to spell our options out in more detail, and TELL US how we can assure that we will still get paper materials if we want them.

We really do NOT want to drown in paper during the big Meeting Season – but readers; please, we beg you, sample your own cooking! Most of the e-materials we review are so reader-unfriendly as to be totally useless to wannabe voters – Annoying,
insulting, and huge, and hugely-frustrating timewasters besides! NOW is a very good time to resolve to do a better job of rounding up the retail vote for next year…and to get started on it!