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| Friday, November 20, 2009 |
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ANALYSIS
March 2, 2009
Sagging Index no longer reflects what’s going on in the market, some say, Replacements? Google it, to start.
March 2, 2009
Downward price spiral will actually boost the cost of capital for most companies. CFOS, take note.
March 2, 2009
The latest bailout at AIG could be a preview of how the president will deal with Wall Street.
March 2, 2009
No corporate defaults. Big debt offerings. Percolating CP issuance. Things may be looking up in the capital markets.
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March 3, 2009 3:44 PM ET
(Crain’s)—A big British pension-fund adviser and manager is coming to shake things up at some large U.S. banks. “The state of shareholder rights in the U.S. is dismal,” said Colin Melvin, chief executive of Hermes Equity Ownership Services Ltd., which advises clients who hold $100 billion of assets. “We’d be delighted to help change that.” Melvin, whose firm has lobbied for reforms at such huge European companies as Royal Bank of Scotland and Siemens, is now spending more time in New York to meet with big financial institutions and suggest needed changes in their business practices and boardrooms. He declined to identify the institutions “but you can probably imagine who they are,” he said. Citigroup? Bank of America? AIG? Melvin wouldn’t say. But, among other things, he’d like to see U.S. companies grant investors an advisory vote on the pay of top executives and make it easier for shareholders to nominate and elect board members of their own choosing. The arrival of London-based Hermes to New York comes as institutional money managers around the globe show signs of discarding their traditionally passive ways after the economic collapse savaged so many of their holdings. Hermes manages about $40 billion in assets. A group sponsored by the United Nations, the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, on Monday called for its 500 members—including some of the nation’s top money managers, such as BlackRock Inc., J.P. Morgan Asset Management and several major public pension plans—to admit to mistakes they made during the run-up to the crisis and urged them to more actively address companies “where risks are not being managed appropriately.” In board elections at many leading corporations this spring, the UN group urged, investors should “ensure their shares are voted in an informed and robust way.” Such signs of institutional investors taking a more aggressive stance come as corporations brace for what looks like especially contentious annual stockholder meetings later this spring. Activist shareholders are planning to voice their dissatisfaction at these affairs, either by yelling at top executives and directors during the meetings or by filing investor resolutions that seek to dress them down a bit by reining in their authority. Melvin says Hermes would rather not display its displeasure in public by filing shareholder resolutions or releasing its correspondence with companies, as some hedge fund managers do. Rather, it prefers to discreetly lobby for change in private meetings. They’re British, after all. “We don’t make a fuss,” Melvin said, “publicly.”
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