TheCorporateCounsel.net

May 10, 2013

Director Expenses & Director Education

In this podcast, Ginny Fogg of Norfolk Southern provides some insight into handling director expenses, including:

– Is there a policy for director expenses? Is it written?
– What processes are in place to handle director expenses?
– How are pre-approvals of expenses handled?
– What is your favorite way to celebrate the arrival of Spring?
– How do your directors decide what conferences to attend?
– Have you been to any director conferences yourself?

Check out our new checklist on director expense reimbursement policies

Unusual Assets in Pension Plans

I rarely blog about pension plans. Not because there is nothing newsworthy. In fact, it’s probably because there is so much newsworthy and I have to draw the line somewhere or I’d be blogging 24 hours per day. The New York Times recently ran an article – entitled “Companies Substitute Intangibles, Like Cheese, for Investments” – describing the growing trend of the use of unusual assets to fund pension plans. Along those lines, check out this case study from Valuation Research Corporation which describes how TUI Travel plc – one of the world’s largest travel companies – is using intellectual property to shore up their pension plan.

9th-11th Say-on-Pay Failures of the Year

As noted in its Form 8-K, Stillwater Mining is the 9th company holding an annual meeting in 2013 to fail to gain majority support for its say-on-pay (32% support). And as noted in its Form 8-K, AXIS Capital Holdings is the 10th company (also 32% support).

And for the 11th failure, as noted in its Form 8-K, Comstock Resources had just 32% support this week – it also failed last year with 35% support.

– Broc Romanek