Dave wrote:
You really don't understand how shareholder meetings work, Doug.

Why yes, I'm sure.

Always a good way to make a point, insist the other guys
doesn't know what he's talking about. Especially when he was
there personally.


... Anyone who
goes to a shareholder meeting thinking that what is said there is likely to
affect the outcome of the vote is simply clueless. It's the fight for proxy
votes that precedes the meeting that is significant.

Correct. And in this case, the directors voted their proxies
against the expressed (in many cases written) intent of the
shareholders... in other words, they voted proxies that they
didn't really have.

Owners of common stock *do* have the right to vote their
shares. I don't understand the court case or what "facts"
were found to support the directors, but the intent of the
majority of shareholders was quite clear.

And oddly enough, the shareholders were right. HP took a
nosedive right off a cliff.

There are a few other cases I can point to, for example the
Coca-Cola CEO and CFO $100 mil+ stock awards of a few years
ago... voted down by the shareholders, passed by the directors.



.... (I know. I've
been an inspector of elections at meetings of a large public company.)

In other words, you know how to circumvent the process?

... Votes
cast at the meeting represent just a small adjustment to the totals.

Sure. In many cases, perhaps most, the Board of Directos
hold a majority of common stock among themselves. In that
case, the public (individual & institutional) shareholders
are just along for the ride. Some surprisingly large
corporations are this way.


... The
people who you see showing up are the ones who want to put on a show, not
the ones who hold the large share positions.


Uh huh.

When the reps of American Funds, Putnam, and Vanguard all
show up and say publicly that they are NOT granting the
usual proxies to the directors on shares held by their
funds, that's a rather different scenario... there was a big
insurance company that chimed in, don't remember which one.

The HP fight was a clear example of a BS decision IMHO. You
can talk about how it was legal, and maybe it was. That
doesn't make it right.


The one exception I've seen is Carl Icahn, who both has financial clout and
shows up at meetings.

Never met him, he seems like a bit of a predator to me.

Anyway, the real issue is that the top echelon corporate
officers are kleptocrats. They rake in huge amounts of money
whether their business decisions are good or bad. So what's
the motivation to produce? Isn't that supposed to be the
strong point of market capitalism?

Regards
Doug King