By Hoang Nguyen – Senior Research Associate On July 16th, 2012, Yahoo! Inc. announced the appointment of Marissa Mayer as President and CEO and member of the board effective July 17th, 2012. Ms. Mayer was one of the first employees at Google, Inc. and most recently was Vice President of Local, Maps, and Location services. [...]
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Small Print
July 20, 2012 in Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Small Print
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate Strictly on a need to know basis… and, right now, you don’t need to know. A great contribution from rarely-seen-in-Small-Print Company Analyst Team Leader Mike Gordon. This comes from Nash-Finch’s 2012 proxy statement. During 2011, there were no transactions as described in the preceding paragraphs [the [...]
Small Print
July 13, 2012 in Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Small Print
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate Unethical ethics Events Analyst Marge Schwietering found this astounding set of admissions in a survey published on July 10th. A quarter of Wall Street executives see wrongdoing as a key to success, according to a survey by whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow released on Tuesday. In [...]
Regulatory hurdles close doors of retail investor voting platform Moxy Vote
July 10, 2012 in Corporate Governance, Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Proxy Voting, Regulation, Shareholder Activism
By Michelle Lamb — Senior Research Associate July 31 will be the last day of business for Moxy Vote, the online voting platform designed to help individual “retail” investors vote their shares. It was intended to level the playing field in the game of proxy voting – giving the small shareholder a quick, free means [...]
Shareholder Spring Comes to Japan… at least at Mizuho Financial Group
July 10, 2012 in Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Shareholder Activism
By Nicholas Benes - Representative Director of The Board Director Training Institute of Japan This is the second part of a two-part blog. The Power of “Reasonable Proposals”: Mizuho Financial Group The best example of the potential for a positive and constructive feedback loop arising from “eminently reasonable” shareholder proposals in Japan was set by Mizuho [...]
Shareholder Spring Comes to Japan… at least at Mizuho Financial Group
July 9, 2012 in Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Shareholder Activism
By Nicholas Benes – Representative Director of The Board Director Training Institute of Japan This is part one of a two-part blog posting by Mr. Benes about the Japanese shareholder spring and the latest surprise votes at the annual meeting of Mizuho Financial 2012 seems destined to go down in history as the year when “shareholder spring” [...]
Manchester United to list on NYSE and register in the Cayman Islands
July 5, 2012 in Corporate Governance, Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate I have to say that listing a soccer team on a U.S. stock exchange, the NYSE in this case, is a bit like listing a ski resort on a stock exchange in the Caribbean. Or for that matter, like listing the Red Sox on the London [...]
Barclays’ CEO Bob Diamond Resigns
July 3, 2012 in Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Scandals
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate Barclays’ CEO Bob Diamond has followed the lead of independent chairman Marcus Agius and announced his resignation today, though according to press reports he has done so under protest and with less altruism than Mr. Agius. Interestingly, Mr. Agius is leading the search for a replacement [...]
Barclays’ Chairman Marcus Agius Resigns
July 2, 2012 in Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Scandals
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate Barclays’ chairman Marcus Agius announced his resignation today, indicating that he had stepped down because he was the “ultimate guardian of Barclays’ reputation”. Barclays was the recipient of a massive $450 million fine last week because of its involvement in manipulating LIBOR, the interest rate at which [...]
Small Print
June 30, 2012 in Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Small Print
Mr. Dirty-Clean Events Analyst Marge Schwietering, frankly, must have had a lot of fun putting these together from a couple of days ago. We thought these would be easy winners of the Quotation of the Week Competition, well, they are, actually, but Rex Tillerson raced in with a very close second, of a very different [...]
June 28, 2012: Combined CEO/Chairmen
June 28, 2012 in News and Opinions
June 28, 2012: A GMI Ratings report shows that combined CEO/chairmen cost more, present higher ESG and accounting risk, and provide lower long-term shareholder returns than if the positions are separated. New York, June 28, 2012 – GMI Ratings, the corporate governance, accounting and ESG research and rating firm, released today a new report that shows that [...]
“Dude, I owe you big time”: $450M Fine for Barclays for Doing its Job
June 28, 2012 in Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Regulation, Scandals
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate We are facing yet more revelations that banks are out to make money. Barclays Bank, and what sounds like every single other major global bank, has been manipulating LIBOR (the London Interbank Offered Rate) either to give the impression that the bank was stronger than it [...]
Facebook adds a female director to the board – sort of
June 26, 2012 in Board Diversity, Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate Facebook’s response to criticism that its board was, as GMI Ratings founder Nell Minow is fond of saying, male, pale and stale, has been to appoint Sheryl Sandberg to the board. There are a number of problems with this offered solution. First, one woman on the [...]
SEC Issues Compensation Consultant Rules
June 21, 2012 in Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Regulation
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate Yesterday, the SEC announced new rules governing the use of compensation advisers and the independence and role of the compensation committee of the board. Falling short of mandating the complete independence of such advisers by requiring the compensation committee to hire only those advisers that do [...]
Small Print
June 8, 2012 in Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions, Small Print
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate This Week’s Winner of the Name Change of the Month Competition Events Team Leader Mark Magee spotted this name change in a June 5th 8-K that is a clear winner in this month’s competition, and smacks, he notes, of desperation. Quepasa Corporation changed its name to [...]
French Government to Impose Pay Cap on CEOs
May 31, 2012 in CEO Pay, Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate The new socialist government in France – leading the way by taking a 30 percent pay cut itself – promised to impose pay limits on executives at companies in which it owns a majority stake, according to the Financial Times today. Pay will be capped at 20 [...]
Will Wal-Mart listen to its public shareholders?
May 30, 2012 in Corporate Governance, Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Officer Several high-powered institutional shareholders, such as CalSTRS, have indicated that they are going to vote against a number of Wal-Mart directors who, frankly, should have known better. While institutions such as CalSTRS do not often go public with their voting intentions, when they do, you know [...]
Was Sanjay Jha’s Pay a Good Return on Investment?
May 30, 2012 in CEO Pay, Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate [This post first appeared on Forbes.com] The news that Sanjay Jha is stepping down after successfully negotiating the sale of his company Motorola Mobility Holdings to Google confirms the fact – once again – that compensation committees do not understand the terms “long-term” and “incentive”. Included [...]
May 23, 2012: Reuters survey
May 23, 2012 in News and Opinions
May 23, 2012: Survey reveals more top executives willing to pay bribes (Reuters)
A Solution for ExxonMobil’s Say on Pay Woes
May 22, 2012 in CEO Pay, Daily Viewpoint, News and Opinions
By Paul Hodgson – CCO and Senior Research Associate Last year, almost a third of shareholders voted against ExxonMobil’s Say on Pay resolution. This is well below average levels of support for Say on Pay, even among other oil companies some of whom actually paid their CEOs more than ExxonMobil despite being much smaller, and, [...]