James McRitchie

Notes from Intuit's 2009 Shareholder Meeting

Rafat - Another interesting meeting report that is much appreciated. Good product development suggestions. I would have liked to see a little more in your report on corporate governance issues. Did directors attend and answer questions? Were voting results announced?

California Dreamin' Over?

"CalPERS already has almost $200 billion for state workers' pensions. Yes, that's "billion" with a "b." Guess who paid all that money? If you work in the private sector and paid taxes, you did. Do you have a pension, a relatively safe job, and the possibility of lifetime medical benefits? I'm just sayin'."

Your statement is misleading. More than 80% of that $200 billion comes from earnings by the fund, which is far more efficient than DC plans. Taxpayers paid about 8% of the $200 billion and public employees in the fund paid the rest.

Notes from Symantec's Annual Shareholder Meeting

Mr. Rafat, you've done an outstanding job reporting on this annual meeting. I wish you could attend every meeting out there and produce similar reports. Thanks for stepping up and helping the Investor Suffrage Movement. When I get a few free minutes, I'll publish a link to your post from my newspage.

Calpers Has a Special Responsibility to Support California Businesses?

Of course CalPERS should consider the impact of its investments on California's economy. If the economy continues to go south, taxes, which pay member salaries and a portion of retirement contribution, goes with it. The financial health of its members it linked to the health of California's economy. However, investments that support the economy should be made only where other factors are at least equal.

Corporate Governance and Agency Problems: Destroying Democracy

With only 5% of retail shareowners voting, we need to place more emphasis on real people, direct shareownrs and beneficial owners. One of the best efforts in that direction is proxydemocracy.org/, which facilitate voting by posting the votes of respected institutional investors in advance of meetings and by rating mutual funds on their voting behavior.

Notes from Brocade Communications' Shareholder Meeting

Great coverage! The only company I've ever heard of that didn't allow resolutions to be presented during the business portion of the meeting, prior to the vote, is Whole Foods. We raised that as an issue and I think they learned a lesson. I'm glad you raised the diversity issue. We should be doing that at almost every meeting because it applies to most companies.

Two Ways to Fix Corporate Boards

Re proxy access, investors should be pushing an alternative threshold of 100 shareowners. In many small companies, there are no large institutional investors. Even where there are large institutional investors, it isn't the Fidelity's of the world that will advocate for change. The UK has an access provision that allows a single 5% shareowner or a group of 100 access. They haven't been able to reach the 5% shareowner level and PIRC is now putting together a group of 100.

Re proxy voting. Retail shareowners can get much of the benefits of hiring a proxy advisor, without the cost, by going to proxydemocracy.org/ and seeing how respected institutional investors such as CalPERS, Florida SBA, Domini, Calvert, AFSCME and other are voting. ProxyDemocracy will even automatically e-mail you on upcoming meetings, how these funds are voting and will link you to proxy materials, in case you want to do your own digging.