It’s a big one this week because, well, because I had proper work to do last week and didn’t have time to get to this. So these first three are from last week. Just in time for Halloween First from Marge Schwietering, a nice little find from a Family Dollar website press release on October [...]
Archive | October, 2010
CNBC’s John Carney Cannot Believe Anyone Would Want Advice on Proxies
October 27, 2010 in Proxy Voting
On the CNBC website, John Carney has written two separate posts about proxy advisory services. It's as though he didn't just publish the Chamber of Commerce talking points without editing them; it seems as though he never even read them before he slapped on his by-line. When did it become permissible for a journalist to [...]
You are now reading one of the Top 25 Business Law Blogs!
October 27, 2010 in Daily Viewpoint
Hey, thank you so much, all our readers, for voting us as one of the Top 25 Business Law Blogs in the LexisNexis corporate and securities law community. Let’s hope it’s not because we got six votes to everyone else’s five! Just joking. And, since the winning blogs are listed in alphabetical order I’m going to [...]
The Proxy Access Premium
October 25, 2010 in Proxy Access
Congress promises, the SEC delivers, and the courts take it away. The Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable promised to challenge the proxy access rule in court as soon as it was issued, and they came through, and the SEC has halted the application of the rules until the litigation is resolved. As the court [...]
“Rating the Raters”: A Corporate Service
October 21, 2010 in ESG Ratings & Research
The first two reports in consultancy SustainAbility’s four-part “Rating the Raters” series have now been released. They have very helpfully clarified the motivations and nature of the project, which had puzzled me somewhat. On the one hand, I understand the project’s call for clarity about ratings methodologies. Both The Corporate Library and our sister company, [...]
Countrywide’s Mozilo fesses up some fines… a bit
October 20, 2010 in Daily Viewpoint
It might be the SEC’s largest ever financial penalty against a public company’s executive, but to Angelo Mozilo, $67.5 million is pocket money, especially as Bank of America is liable for $45 million of it so Mozilo will only pay out $22.5 million of it. That’s barely the price of a single year’s cash bonus [...]
Charles Ferguson on his Documentary About the Financial Meltdown
October 20, 2010 in Financial Crisis
The scariest — and most infuriating — movie of the year is "Inside Job," the documentary about the financial meltdown from Charles Ferguson, the director of "No End in Sight." With just two films, Ferguson, a PhD in political science who made a fortune in software, has become an extraordinarily accomplished director and journalist and [...]
Why We Should Not Regulate Proxy Advisory Firms
October 19, 2010 in Regulation
The Securities and Exchange Commission has invited comments on a wide range of topics concerning the proxy system, with tomorrow the last day to file. This is my comment on why the Commission should not regulate proxy advisory firms: Comments regarding proxy voting system reform File Number S7-1410 Ladies and Gentlemen of the U.S. Securities [...]
Small Print & Hilarious Corporate Band Names Contest
October 15, 2010 in Small Print
Mark thinks a better name would have been "Coalplay" Events Team Leader Mark Magee that is. It was Events Analyst Dovid Muyderman, though, who found this in an October 6 8-K from Chesapeake Energy. But really, who knew there were corporate bands, never mind a Battle of the Corporate Bands Competition? Chesapeake Energy Corporation’s (NYSE:CHK) [...]
Eurosif Study Reports Explosive Growth
October 14, 2010 in ESG Ratings & Research
The 2010 Eurosif Study, just out this week, demonstrates the robust health of the European market for what is now being called “sustainable and responsible investment” (a new version of “SRI.”) The headline is that the European SRI market nearly doubled from 2007 to 2009, to €5 trillion. This expansive growth during a market downturn [...]
Executive pay changes at Occidental Petroleum
October 14, 2010 in Executive Pay
So Stephen Chazen is chasing Ray Irani upstairs, becoming CEO while Irani is staying on as executive chairman? That’s no surprise. Though, of course, having the former CEO stay on as executive or non-executive chairman as part of your succession plan has generally tended to lead to disaster but let’s leave that to the side [...]
Top Firms Cause $2.15 Trillion a Year in Environmental Damage
October 13, 2010 in Environmental Issues
This just out: a report from environmental research firm Trucost that quantifies, for the first time, environmental externalities—the costs that companies impose other parts of society. The groundbreaking study was commissioned by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) and United Nations Environmental Program Finance Initiative. It synthesizes a very wide array of studies [...]
Still Flying on the Company Dollar, Just Shorter Flights
October 7, 2010 in CEO Pay
In followup to our March 2010 Proxy Season "Foresight" on trends in CEOs' personal use of aircraft, we pulled a fresh dataset on September 21st to review the latest developments – call it a Proxy Season "Hindsight". We again pulled our Russell 3000 and S&P 500 companies, this time analyzing only those with proxies filed [...]
A Real Conservative on Proxy Access
October 7, 2010 in Proxy Access
Thank goodness for Marty Robins who finally says what all political conservatives and other free market types should have been saying all along. In an excellent op-ed in the Huffington Post, Robins calls on his fellow conservatives to "do the right thing on proxy access." He says that the challenge to proxy access filed by [...]
Lessons to be learned from Say on Pay
October 6, 2010 in Executive Pay: Say on Pay
Another in a series of rehashes of conference material, one of the questions that our panel addressed at the 7th Annual Executive Compensation Conference was: What hot button issues will drive high votes against Management Say on Pay (MSOP) resolutions in 2011? Are there lessons to be learned from 2010’s “no votes on MSOP at [...]
Interview: Chad Troutwine of “Freakonomics”
October 3, 2010 in Miscellaneous
Who could have imagined that economics would become cool? Often referred to as "the dismal science," economics has long been associated with formulas filled with little Greek letters and articles that propose valuing human life at x. But Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist [...]
Small Print
October 1, 2010 in Small Print
Woman Worth Watching Hey. We didn’t make this up! Events Team Leader Mark Magee just spotted this September 24 website release from ConAgra Foods. ConAgra Foods CMO Joan Chow Named As A "Woman Worth Watching" By Profiles In Diversity Journal Magazine OMAHA, Neb., Sept. 24, 2010 – ConAgra Foods’ Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing [...]