As you may recall, 2011 marked the first year that all company proxy ballots were required to have a say on pay vote, giving shareholders the opportunity to have a say in the current executive compensation packages. Last year, 42 S&P 500 companies did not reach the recommended 70% majority vote threshold. One of thoseContinue Reading
Last week Hewlett-Packard announced a major victory for activists and shareholders – acceptance of the proxy access rule. What does that mean? Well, in 2013, shareholders will be able to nominate members for the board of directors on the company’s proxy ballot. This is a huge step for shareholders because proxy ballots usually only listContinue Reading
In honor of Valentine’s Day, we thought it was appropriate to share a sweet success with our users. A few weeks ago, The Hershey Company announced that they will begin purchasing Rainforest Alliance fair trade certified cocoa for all of its
Big news! Last Thursday, Hormel announced its commitment to get rid of gestation crates in all of its company owned farms by the end of 2017. The Humane Society addressed the issue at Hormel’s annual shareholder meeting last week, and with pressure from concerned shareholders, consumers and advocacy groups, breeding sows will no longer beContinue Reading
Walgreens held their annual shareholder meeting last week in Chicago. We covered Walgreens in last week’s Corporate Governance Update. We pointed out that over the past three years Walgreens has faced shareholder resolutions that are hot topics in the corporate governance world. For instance: Majority voting (2010) Performance-based compensation (2011) Executive equity retention (2012)
A few weeks ago, one of our users pointed out a company to us that is doing a commendable job. We were impressed with what we learned about Subaru of Indiana Automotive (SIA) from this Bloomberg Businessweek article.
Earlier this week, MarketWatch featured a press release from The Association of BellTel Retirees, which represents over 230,000 Verizon retirees. Over the past 12 years, the group has played an active role in using their shareholder power and proxy votes to influence Verizon’s corporate governance policies. However, MarketWatch reports that the group’s present concern centersContinue Reading
One of our Advocates, The Center for Political Accountability (CPA), is the topic of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal regarding the hot issue of political donations. The WSJ article, written by Brad Smith, defends the right of corporations to secretly fund political campaigns. Smith attacks the CPA and their push towards ‘transparency andContinue Reading
Last week, Jack Ucciferri from Harrington Investments published an interesting article focusing on how shareholders are ultimately responsible for director indemnification, especially when they represent big banking corporations. Jack explains, “In layman’s terms, this means that bank shareholders (often unwittingly) pay for what amount to licenses for these public menaces to be shielded from theContinue Reading
Recently, activist investing has gotten some attention at Oshkosh and Hewlett Packard, but both companies aren’t looking at the situation in the same way. In October, we sent out a Corporate Governance Update focused on activist investing, highlighting why these investors can be good or bad for the company. Perhaps Oshkosh and HP are primeContinue Reading
Here, we muse about proxy voting, corporate governance, our startup experience, and whatever else strikes our fancy.
