By Dominic Jones | Published: April 10, 2008 | 
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E-Proxy Part 37: Try this for fun
YOU know how under the SEC’s notice-and-access process companies send their shareholders a postcard-size notice asking them to go online to view their annual meeting materials?
Well, I think you will agree with me that the single most important bit of information on that notice is the URL that you want people to go to. So when I saw this example I had to wonder what these people were thinking:
Which company is responsible for doing that? Just enter the URL to find out.
Oh, and here’s the easy way to fix this kind of problem. You’d think one of this company’s service providers would have told them.
P.S. The first person who sends me the name of the company concerned wins a prize.
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April 10th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
After mistyping it twice, I got Urban Outfitters.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Urban Outfitters
April 10th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Yikes, that is one ugly looking URL for Urban Outfitters. You would think a brand conscious retailer we know better than not at least include their name in the URL. Also, that comma at the end of the URL will trip up half the boomers that try to use it.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
OK. There are so many ways to avoid this scenario.
If they’d thought about it ahead of time, they could have — for the princely sum of $4.95 to $8.95 — registered a domain (e.g. urbanoutfitters-agm.com)and forwarded people to the longer URL. Anyone can do that. Seriously, *anyone.* No tech know-how required.
They could have redirected from something like urbanoutfitters.com/annualmeeting to the longer URL at no additional cost. A little bit of tech know-how required.
They could have used TinyURL. A 4-year-old can do that, but it might not be kosher for SEC filings. However, it’s used in the UK for regulatory filings, so I don’t see why not here.
They could have, they could have…
One thing they did right was to send people to their site rather than direct to http://www.proxyvote.com or one of the other voting sites.
Why the SEC allows links direct to the voting sites instead of via the proxy materials, I don’t know because that was a big issue in the comment period. They didn’t want people to get the proxy card ahead of getting the proxy materials to ensure people cast informed votes.
But by sending people to http://www.proxyvote.com under notice-and-access (which is what is now happening in most cases) Broadridge and others are essentially delivering the proxy card ahead of the disclosure materials. Yes, I know the materials are there at the same time, but proxyvote.com is set up to drive voting, not drive people to the proxy statement and annual report.
Huh?
April 11th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Actually the company that is hosting the proxy materials is Thomson Financial. They should know better than that. Sloppy work. Not urban outfitters fault.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Eva,
Thomson didn’t write the notice. They just host the site. And it is Urban Outfitters’ meeting, so they have to take responsibility.
As much as I am critical of Thomson, I can’t lay all of the blame at their door for this one. I’m not sure they would even have been aware that the company was going to use that URL. I’ve seen cases where redirects were in place for Thomson hosted materials.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
The problem with TinyUrl and its ilk is that sysadmins add these to rapidly growing lists of websites to block.
Still, custom made URL shorteners a two a ha’penny to create
April 15th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
perhaps not as discreet but then why not use a simple blogger or wordpress re-direct… heck there are so many ways to avoid this.