Moxy Vote Blog

We would like to welcome another batch of new advocates on our site. They include Harrington Investments, MMA Praxis Mutual Funds, PETA, Oxfam America and Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan. At Moxy Vote, we take pride in being a neutral marketplace of diverse ideas and views on the many issues in the world of corporate governance. These new advocates reaffirm this principle once again and we thank them for their participation.

Also, hundreds of new ballots have hit our site the last several weeks confirming that we truly are in the middle of the busy spring proxy season. I can’t highlight even a fraction of our advocates’ opinions here, but below are a few to whet your appetite:

• General Electric: Aquinas Associates supports a resolution regarding pay disparity and better equity among the top and bottom wage earners at the company.
• Boeing: On a topic we have blogged about in the past, disclosure of political contributions by corporations, the Center for Political Accountability is supporting a resolution calling on Boeing to come clean.
• Coca-Cola Enterprises: Teamsters and Change to Win are both supporting a resolution calling for an end to outsized severance packages for the company’s executives.
• Ryland Group and Lennar Corporation: The Nathan Cummings Foundation is supporting a resolution that is on both companies’ ballots that calls for the adoption of quantitative goals for reducing GHG emissions.

As things ramp up, I encourage you to keep checking the home page and the blog for new ballots and advocates!

Less than three months ago, Eliot Spitzer discussed the potential of Moxy Vote in an article at Slate. In the piece, he said improved corporate governance “will, and should, come from the activities of [retail] shareholders, aided by new technology” such as Moxy Vote.

But last week, in another article for Slate, he changed his tune. Now, he’s saying it would be “cat herding” to try to enlist all stock owners in a shareholder revolution. Apparently, he now thinks large institutional investors are the only ones that can get the job done. Institutions have held the power for years and have NOT gotten the job done, so why should we expect that will change now?

In any case, I’m not sure why he had a change of heart.  Maybe he didn’t like the gnome skeetshoot in the video we released last month?

Recently, we’ve been highlighting individuals and organizations who have made important contributions to the fields of corporate governance and shareholder advocacy. (See Pioneers, part 1 and Pioneers, part 2.) Today, we finish up this current round of “Pioneers.”

Rich Ferlauto (now at the SEC) - Rich has been an active and vocal proponent of shareholder rights and good corporate governance practices for most of his career. Prior to joining the SEC in the Office of Investor Education and Advocacy (OIEA), Rich led the Corporate Governance group at the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). It was at AFSCME where he used his institutional prominence to help force companies to run better from a corporate governance standpoint. Now he is taking his knowledge and experience to the SEC to help educate and fight for the rights of shareholders. We wish him well in his new role.

Simon Billenness

Simon Billenness at Sierra Club. Simon is a passionate shareholder advocate with a long history of forcing positive change in public company behavior and has a special knack for networking. His almost 20 years of industry experience and ability to connect people are what drove us to work with him after launching Moxy Vote last spring. He quickly grasped the potential of our idea for advocates and individual shareholders, and Simon was instrumental in introducing Moxy Vote to many shareholder advocates in the space. After helping us become a part of the industry, he went back to his true passion of taking on corporations that behave badly – joining the Sierra Club late last year as the Senior Campaign Representative for Corporate Accountability on their Beyond Coal campaign.  If I were coal industry executive, I would be more than a little concerned about having Simon target my company with shareholder resolutions. We can’t thank him enough for his help and support and look forward to his success at the Sierra Club.

Unfortunately, we can’t list everyone who has helped shareholders have a voice, but we will continue to highlight individuals and organizations that we believe you should know about in this space.

John Bogle recently wrote an opinion letter, published in BusinessWeek, expressing concern over the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations to spend freely on political donations.  Moxy Vote has commented on this ruling here, on our blog.

Bogle’s concerns are consistent with the worries President Obama expressed in his January 2010 State of the Union speech.  While President Obama encouraged Congress to reverse the Supreme Court decision, Bogle puts the onus on shareholders, for a very good reason:

We can justifiably suppose that the individuals holding shares in these giant corporations hold a broad spectrum of opinions, and corporate political contributors can hardly honor them all. Past experience also suggests that corporate managers are likely to try to shape government policy in a way that serves their own interests over that of their shareholders.

Last week, we invited Warren Buffett to become an advocate on our site.  And, while we may be showing hubris by inviting two icons to our party in such a short period of time, we can’t help ourselves. So, here we go again:

Hey Mr. Bogle!  You are cordially invited to become an advocate on Moxy Vote. Here, you can rally shareholders to file and pass resolutions requiring that corporations not make political contributions without the approval of 75% of shares outstanding. If you’re interested, have your people contact our people.

Warren Buffett issued his annual letter to shareholders two weeks ago. These letters are always a great read, and this is one is no exception. Here, he comments on corporate governance and the credit crisis:

It has not been shareholders who have botched the operations of some of our country’s largest financial institutions. Yet they have borne the burden, with 90% or more of the value of their holdings wiped out in most cases of failure. Collectively, they have lost more than $500 billion in just the four largest financial fiascos of the last two years. To say these owners have been “bailed-out” is to make a mockery of the term.

The CEOs and directors of the failed companies, however, have largely gone unscathed. Their fortunes may have been diminished by the disasters they oversaw, but they still live in grand style. It is the behavior of these CEOs and directors that needs to be changed: If their institutions and the country are harmed by their recklessness, they should pay a heavy price – one not reimbursable by the companies they’ve damaged nor by insurance. CEOs and, in many cases, directors have long benefitted from oversized financial carrots; some meaningful sticks now need to be part of their employment picture as well.

Hey Mr. Buffett! You are cordially invited to become an advocate on Moxy Vote, where you can help us rally the retail vote and help influence the CEOs and Directors with some “sticks”. If you’re interested, have your people contact our people.

Flickr photo by apfriedman. Here’s another good one.

Since the great credit crisis, the SEC has had its hands full. Among other things, the Commission had to deal with regulatory flaws Madoff exposed, the public outcry to reign in dastardly short sellers, the massive leverage employed by Wall Street, and the market’s underlying structure that is apparently allowing high frequency traders to print money all day long.

It is no surprise they have not focused on encouraging retail investors to actively participate in the proxy voting process. There have just been bigger fires to put out.

But, it is encouraging to see that they prominently displayed a link to Proxy Matters on their homepage in the Spotlight section. Behind this link, the SEC says the proxy voting process is a primary way that investors can “make their views known to company management.”

Perhaps this issue is moving closer to the forefront of their agenda. Since poor corporate governance is the root cause of many problems we have experienced in the last decade, we hope they take a long hard look at it.

Two weeks ago, we highlighted individuals and organizations that have made important contributions to the field of corporate governance and shareholder advocacy. Today we post a continuation of that discussion.

Glyn Holton

Glyn Holton at Investor Suffrage Movement - Having limited contact with Glyn, we mainly admire his work from afar. His primary effort is fighting for shareholder rights through the newly created U.S. Proxy Exchange. He just scored a victory for the “little guy” when the Exchange was able to help convince Intel from staging an online-only annual meeting – something that is NOT conducive to shareholder advocacy. Glyn also created the Field Agent Program, which organizes volunteers to attend shareholder meetings on behalf of large and small shareholders to ensure their agenda is heard by the board.

Lisa Woll & Meg Voorhes

Social Investment Forum - The Social Investment Forum (SIF) is a group that promotes the practice and growth of socially responsible investing (SRI) in the U.S. Forum members, including Moxy Vote, support SRI through investment management techniques, shareholder advocacy and community investing. Members are offered programs from SIF that help expand SRI and its impact. The Forum is led by Lisa Woll and Meg Voorhes. Their expertise and experience are helping push SIF to new heights. We encourage you to check out their website to help you on your journey to becoming a better stock owner.

Nell Minow

Nell Minow at the Corporate Library - Not much more can be said that has not already been spoken or written about Nell. She is a already well-known as a true pioneer and a successful entrepreneur. She has battled poor corporate governance practices (e.g., bad directors, outsized compensation plans, and golden parachutes) for most of her career, and she has testified to Congress on such issues. Her celebrity is multi-faceted, as she also finds time to run a very well-known movie review site called MovieMom.

In the coming weeks, we will finish up this current round of “Pioneers” with two remaining individuals – Rich Ferlauto and Simon Billenness. Stay tuned!

There’s a really good article in today’s New York Times about the practices, politics and potential of retail proxy voting.

Tara Siegel Bernard did her homework on this one, interviewing Mark Latham of the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee, Nell Minow of The Corporate Library, Stephen Davis of Yale, Michael Passoff of As You Sow, and some guy from Moxy Vote.

Our animation team will be ecstatic, as our quirky artwork was used to illustrate the article.  There’s a little You on page B1 of the print edition, and B4 is covered with our scribbly drawings. Fun stuff.

But rather than read what I’m writing about what she wrote, you should just read what she wrote.