Which companies care about retail shareholder votes?
NATIONAL Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) CEO Jeff Morgan noted in his weekly message yesterday that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) wants companies to help educate retail investors about proxy voting by adding links on their websites to the SEC’s educational materials.
At annual meeting, Starbucks distracted by shiny objects
COFFEE company Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX) held its annual meeting in front of a 2000-strong crowd in its hometown Seattle yesterday – and if you weren’t able to be there in person you could tune in to a video webcast and live tweeting session to stay in the loop.
A say-on-pay reputation risk for insurers
ACTUALLY, this reputation risk will exist for all publicly traded companies with investment operations, but there may be different aspects to take into consideration for different industries.
Dear Moody’s Corp: Type this fast 3 times
UNDER the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s controversial notice-and-access (N&A) process for the delivery of annual meeting materials, companies can mail their shareholders a slip of paper containing a URL where recipients can access their proxy materials online. Moody’s Corporation (NYSE:MCO) is one company that is in the process of sending such a notice to [...]
SEC should focus on access in “notice & access”
AFTER a long delay, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has finally proposed tweaks to its failed “notice and access” process for delivering shareholder meeting materials on the web. The model, which essentially transfers the decision to receive materials electronically or in print from shareowners to companies, has resulted in a dramatic drop in the [...]
Intel first to offer live Internet voting at annual meeting
INTEL Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) will become the first U.S. company to enable all of its shareholders to attend, ask questions and cast their votes live on the web at its next annual meeting. Although advance Internet voting and annual meeting webcasts have been common for several years, shareholders were not previously able to vote live [...]
My advice to Directors: get out the vote!
EVER since the folks at Risk Metrics asked me several weeks ago to write something for directors about communicating with shareholders, I’ve been struggling to put down my thoughts in some sort of coherent form. The problem, you see, is that I don’t think there’s anything directors can do. Communication is not enough. PR and [...]
SEC’s Aguilar: Fix e-Proxy or scrap it
SEEKING to improve board accountability to shareholders, one of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) leaders has called for the 18-month-old electronic proxy delivery rules to be improved or repealed. Commissioner Luis Aguilar said at the SEC Speaks in 2009 event in Washington on Friday that the so-called e-Proxy rules, which enable companies to [...]
A "governance star" snubs shareholders
ACCORDING to Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), the corporate governance ratings company, Black & Decker Corporation (NYSE: BDK) respects its shareholders more than 99% of big U.S. companies. But I think they’ve got it wrong. I am going to explain why in a roundabout way, so please bear with me. Below is ISS’s Corporate Governance Quotient [...]
Web-based campaigns a wake-up call for corporations
THE web-based Save Disney campaign humbled an immovable board by turning the company’s annual meeting into a public referendum on the effectiveness of the board and CEO. It did so in the space of three months and was spearheaded by two dissident directors — Roy Disney and Stanley Gold — who relied almost entirely on [...]
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