Editor’s Note: Lucian Bebchuk is the Director of the Shareholder Rights Project (SRP), Scott Hirst is the SRP’s Associate Director, and June Rhee is Counsel at the SRP. The SRP, a clinical program operating at Harvard Law School, works on behalf of public pension funds and charitable organizations seeking to improve corporate governance at publicly traded companies, as well as on research and policy projects related to corporate governance. Any views expressed and positions taken by the SRP and its representatives should be attributed solely to the SRP and not to Harvard Law School or Harvard University. The work of the SRP has been discussed in other posts on the Forum available here.
As a result of the work of the Shareholder Rights Project (SRP) and SRP-represented investors, declassification proposals will be voted on in April and May 2013 at the annual meetings of 36 S&P 500 and Fortune 500 companies:
- At 28 companies, agreed-upon management proposals to declassify will be brought to a shareholder vote of approval pursuant to agreements entered into with SRP-represented investors;
- At 8 companies, where such agreements have not been reached, precatory proposals that the SRP has submitted on behalf of SRP-represented investors will go to a vote.
These 36 proposals are in addition to 9 proposals that already went to a vote and were approved at annual meetings of S&P 500 and Fortune 500 companies in 2013 (3 management proposals and 6 precatory proposals), as well as the many additional declassification proposals (both agreed-upon management proposals and precatory proposals) that will go to a vote at subsequent annual meetings.