On issues from sky-high executive compensation to big-bank bailouts, individual shareowners have unique credibility. We supposedly own the corporations and banks, but our authority to control them has been dismantled. We are working to fix that. Run by individual shareowners for individual shareowners, we are the United States Proxy Exchange. Join us.
October 16, 2012 in General
Update: This is a revised version of an earlier post this month. I’ve deleted that post because I don’t want anyone to mistakenly use the prior draft language. I’m hoping this language is a little tighter but always welcome reader suggestions. Last month I hoped ISS would reconsider their analysis of our proxy access proposal at [...]
September 19, 2012 in General
The Dodd-Frank Act established the Investor Advisory Committee (IAC) to advise the Securities and Exchange Commission on regulatory priorities, the regulation of securities products, trading strategies, fee structures, the effectiveness of disclosure, and on initiatives to protect investor interests and to promote investor confidence and the integrity of the securities marketplace. The IAC met for [...]
August 9, 2012 in General
The good news is that, on the second round of submissions of the USPX model proxy access proposal, the SEC rejected all no-action requests. We now have votes coming up in the next couple months at Forest Labs ($FRX), Medtronic ($MDT) and H&R Block ($HRB). All three were submtted by individual shareowner Kenneth Steiner. The [...]
August 9, 2012 in General
(Note: All links in this article are internal … You have to be logged into the USPX website for them to work.) If you have been a member of the USPX for a while and haven’t found an opportunity to get involved, two wonderful opportunities have just opened up. One requires considerable experience in shareowner [...]
August 1, 2012 in General
The cartoon at left accompanied an article entitled Where are the funds? (Pensions & Investments, 3/5/2012). P&I lamented, “instead of sitting on the sidelines, activist investors should take advantage of the opportunity to file access proposals… proxy access proponents must be adventurous.” Working through the USPX, individual shareowners are using the key; adventure is on [...]
July 19, 2012 in General
At last week’s annual members meeting, attendees expressed interest in becoming more involved with the actual governance of the USPX. Accordingly, Chairman Vin Cirulli has launched a new USPX Governance Group that, after login, can be accessed at Community > Groups. Here is the group description: Open to all members, this is a public forum [...]
July 17, 2012 in General
Over July 13-15, USPX members descended on California’s gold country for our Second Annual Members Meeting. We rented a house near Placerville for the weekend. Friday afternoon was mostly socializing. Saturday was the business portion of the meeting. Sunday, we had fun exploring historical sites in the area. Vin Cirulli and Glyn Holton both got [...]
July 12, 2012 in General
As co-founder Mark Schlegel announced Tuesday, MoxyVote.com will be closing down its proxy voting platform at the end of the month. See also Ross Kerber’s report for Reuters at Shareholder website closing, cites complex voting rules, 7/11/2012 and Mark Latham’s Sad News: @MoxyVote Is Closing #Corpgov. On the surface, it seems like a real tragedy. I’m sure Mark, Doug [...]
July 10, 2012 in General
As Glyn Holton reported last week, the SEC denied no-action requests from Forest Labs ($FRX) and Medtronic ($MDT). (SEC Delivers For Shareowners On Proxy Access, 6/29/2012) Therefore, shareowners will get an opportunity to vote in favor of proxy access at upcoming shareowner meetings.
June 29, 2012 in General
In case you are thinking the USPX website doesn’t look as polished as it once did, you are right. We are in the process of implementing new functionality. Some of this has proved incompatible with features on the home page. For now, we have implemented a more minimalist homepage while we sort things out. The [...]
June 29, 2012 in General
USPX members’ efforts to advance proxy access got a boost today from SEC staff. Two companies, Forest Labs ($FRX) and Medtronic ($MDT), had sought no-action letters from Commission staff to allow them to exclude from their proxy materials the USPX model proxy access proposal. Both requests have been denied. These decisions come on the heals [...]
March 23, 2012 in Standards
Two weeks after SEC lawyers granted six corporations approval to exclude “proxy access” proposals from their proxy materials, USPX members are already submitting an updated version of that same proposal to other corporations. Updated language addresses the flimsy pretexts for the lawyers’ decision, as well as implementing improvements to the proposal language that shareowners have [...]
March 9, 2012 in General
“Stunning”, “arbitrary”, “unjustifiied” … “questionable”: these are some of the words individual shareowners are using to describe the SEC handling of six corporations’ requests to be allowed to exclude the USPX model proxy access proposal from their 2012 proxy materials.[1] This week, the Commission’s staff approved every one of those requests. Corporate executives routinely solicit [...]
January 19, 2012 in General
Eleven weeks ago, we launched the new USPX social networking website. The goal was to create an on-line community for our members to self-organize around issues. Guess what? It is working!!! Already, members Jim McRitchie, Steven Towns and myself have transfered exiting blogs to the USPX website. Members Krassimir Kostadinov, Marko Robinson and Daniel Rudewicz have [...]
December 26, 2011 in General
The United States Proxy Exchange (USPX) is a experiment premised on the notion that a grass roots movement—by individual shareowners, for individual shareowners and funded entirely by dues of individual shaeowners—can improve corporate governance and address financial abuse. It is too early to say for sure, but based on what we achieved in 2011, the [...]
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