Comments on: SEC’s Aguilar: Fix e-Proxy or scrap it

By: Companies using web for shareholder meeting questions | IR Web Report

Companies using web for shareholder meeting questions | IR Web Report — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:01:02 +0000

[...] reengage apathetic retail stockholders in the annual meeting process. At many U.S. company meetings last year, less than 5% of retail shareholder accounts [...]

By: James McRitchie

James McRitchie — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:55:28 +0000

I like Jones’ idea that companies should maintain a minimal level of voting to continue eproxy and that much of the problem lies in presentation – investors won’t read materials designed for paper online. A study cited by InvestorRelationships.com, which has some excellent recommendations for making materials more user friendly, found that 61% of website visitors who identified themselves as retail investors chose to use an HTML version of an annual report when both HTML and PDF were provided to them.

I also like Aguilar’s call for a federal advisory committee to make recommendations for improving retail investor participation in Commission business and for improving the usefulness to retail investors of Commission rules. I wrote to Aguilar recommending Mark Latham, of VoterMedia.org, for that advisory committee. Of course, I also like Aguilar’s support of proxy access and his statement that a 5% threshold is too high. I have been advocating a 3% or 100 shareowner threshold level.

By: jbeeman (Jennifer Beeman)

jbeeman (Jennifer Beeman) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:03:06 +0000

Twitter Comment

Kudos to Dominc on his view of Notice & Access. SEC’s Aguilar: Fix e-Proxy or scrap it. [link to post]

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By: Mike Spelman

Mike Spelman — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:13:30 +0000

After performing hundreds of legitimate N&A analyses, it is quite clear that most Issuers will not save anything engaging in N&A, and in many instances, will actually spend more NOT to print and mail. This is a result of the ancillary N&A fees combined with the fixed costs that are not eliminated under Broadridges pricing proposals.

The cost comparisons provided by many of the Broadridge Representatives are completely inaccurate and contain inflated printing and postage expenses in an effort to illustrate the efficiencies of N&A. Their use of $4.00 per unit for printing and the $.60 delta for postage is absolutely comical! They are not even close on both fronts. In addition, their analsyis does NOT include the hard copy material that is required to be produced, or mailed!!!

There are plenty of ways Issuers can save significantly throughout the process. They include:
Vendor consolidation.
Reduction in paper weight to reduce manufaturing, material and postage costs.
Combining the Proxy Statement with the Annual Report to create a single, self contained document, thus reducing manufacturing costs.
Mail all material Standard A as opposed to First Class.
Providing printers with print ready files and avoid costly typesetting expenses.

For those companies with several hundreds of thousands of shareholders, N&A makes a little more sense, but to the vast majority of Issuers, it is a complete waste of time and money.