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.
December 1, 2011 in General
After two years or legal wrangling, the charade is up. A reform proposal Apache Corp. (APA) has tried to keep from a shareowner vote was resubmitted on Wednesday. It is a fairly benign proposal that, if passed, will ask the board to: … take the steps necessary so that each shareholder voting requirement in our [...]
November 14, 2011 in General
Monday’s Wall Street Journal includes a wonderful article by Joann S. Lublin highlighting the USPX’s efforts to address the risks of “virtual” annual meetings. While virtual annual meetings have the potential to increase shareowner participation, they can also disenfranchise. Rudimentary technology has failed, leaving would-be participants staring at blank screens. Participants complain that tough questions [...]
November 10, 2011 in Standards
Today, the United States Proxy Exchange (USPX) released a Model Proxy Access Proposal that can be presented to corporations for a shareowner vote under SEC Rule 14a-8 to ensure that long-term shareowners have a reasonable, but not necessarily easy, means for including board nominations in the proxy materials those corporations distribute—so called “proxy access”. [...]
November 4, 2011 in General
November 4, 2011 VIA E-MAIL (policy@issgovernance.com) Global Policy Board Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. 2099 Gaither Road Rockville, Maryland 20850 Re: ISS 2012 Proxy Voting Policies – Proxy Access Proposals (US) Dear Sir or Madam: Thank you for this opportunity to comment as you develop policies for making shareowner voting recommendations in 2012. This letter [...]
November 3, 2011 in General
Can you write an e-mail to Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS)? It will take you two minutes, and doing so could have an enormous impact on proxy access proposals in 2012. A hard-working team of USPX members are drafting a model proxy access proposal that members can submit to corporations for the 2012 proxy season. Here [...]
November 1, 2011 in General
Members of the USPX are celebrating the launch of our brand new website. It offers a host of social networking tools that will allow members to network, create their own blogs, form groups, engage in discussion forums and more. It looks similar to the old website, but under the hood, everything has changed. The goal [...]
October 25, 2011 in General
The time has come for shareowners to be allowed to include their own nominees for corporate boards in the proxy materials their corporations send out every year—so-called “ballot access.” The current system—that only allows shareowners to vote for candidates nominated by the current board—is absurd. The SEC has finally reaffirmed shareowners’ right to submit proposals [...]
October 19, 2011 in General
SEC Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14F (CF) finally addresses the issues of what is needed to evidence stock ownership for the purpose of filing a shareowner proposal. It is obvious from a first glance that shareowners whose broker or bank isn’t a DTC participant just got screwed. We will take the view going forward that, [...]
October 5, 2011 in General
Finally, it is happening! Waves of people are hitting the streets. They are camping out at the bastions of casino capitalism. They are organizing, demanding change. It started in New York, with Occupy Wall Street and is now spreading to cities across America. We at the United States Proxy Exchange (USPX) have long advocated that [...]
August 12, 2011 in General
Brett Davidson is a member of the USPX and publishes Investletter. He serves on the committee that released the USPX guidelines for voting on say-on-pay. In this article, he assesses those guidelines, applying them to the 36 corporations that failed their say-on-pay votes this proxy season. For that purpose, he also experiments with how the [...]
August 3, 2011 in Standards
Today, the United States Proxy Exchange (USPX) released standards for shareowners to use in making say-on-pay voting decisions. Congress’s new “say-on-pay” rules allow shareowners to express an opinion on executive compensation at annual meetings. But to make informed voting decisions, shareowners must first assess the compensation packages boards propose. That is not easy, since they [...]
June 17, 2011 in General
On Saturday, eight members of the USPX came together for a day-long focus group to share thoughts on our movement and plan for the future. Kevin and Maggie Weber kindly hosted the gathering at their home near Boston. Attendees came from across the country. Jim McRitchie flew in from California; Vincent Cirulli came from Alabama; [...]
May 12, 2011 in General, Standards
The USPX is releasing draft guidelines for shareowner’s to use in making say-on-pay voting decisions. Comment letters are due by June 2. We hope to have the finalized guidelines out by later this summer. In 1965, CEO pay at large companies was 24 times the average worker’s wages. By 2007 that number had increased to [...]
April 6, 2011 in General, Standards
Since 2008, the USPX website has been a platform to educate and inform shareowners. Now we have transformed it into a powerful social networking platform. Members can post profiles, launch their own blogs, form groups, chat in forums, and self organize. We are just getting started using this wonderful new functionality, mostly testing it, but [...]
March 31, 2011 in General
The SEC has a reputation of enforcing regulations against two-bit players in the financial arena while tiptoeing around the big boys. Back in December, Apache Corp. (APA) announced plans to flaunt US securities laws. The Commission’s response has been three months of unbroken silence. Apache’s CEO, G. Steven Farris, is waging a war against shareowner [...]
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