March 7, 2018
Virtual Meetings: Not “Ordinary Business”
During this proxy season, we’ve blogged a few times about the campaign to stop companies from holding virtual-only annual meetings. As noted in this blog, some companies decided to heed the campaign and announced that they would hold a hybrid meeting instead of a virtual-only.
And this blog announced that the nuns would participate as proponents in the campaign, urging in their shareholder proposals that the topic of virtual-only meetings has become so important as a governance topic that it should no longer be considered “ordinary business” under Rule 14a-8(i)(7). Corp Fin has now issued a response to one of these no-action letter requests – this one to Comcast – and has determined that the topic is still “ordinary business.” And so Comcast can exclude the shareholder proposal…
Please take a moment to participate anonymously in these surveys: “Quick Survey on Annual Meeting Conduct” – and “Quick Survey on Whistleblower Policies & Procedures.”
Tomorrow’s Webcast: “Conduct of the Annual Meeting”
Tune in tomorrow for the webcast – “Conduct of the Annual Meeting” – to hear Bank of America’s Gale Chang, Nielsen’s Emily Epstein, Independent Inspector of Elections’ Carl Hagberg and Verizon Communications’ Dana Kahney discuss how to prepare for your annual shareholders meeting.
Kill The SEC?
Maybe the SEC’s seen its day and we should just start over? That’s what the folks at Competitive Enterprise Institute think. Check out this article…
– Broc Romanek