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 the SRP’s Counsel. 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.
In its news alert released yesterday, the Shareholder Rights Project (SRP), working on behalf of eight SRP-represented investors, announced that proposals submitted for 2013 meetings have already had significant impact. As discussed below, major results obtained so far include the following:
- Following active engagement, 46 S&P 500 and Fortune 500 companies that received shareholder proposals for 2013 annual meetings have already agreed to move towards annual elections.
- These 46 companies represent more than 60% of the companies receiving shareholder proposals from SRP-represented investors for the 2013 proxy season.
- Together with the 2012 work of the SRP, 91 companies — about three-quarters of the S&P 500 and Fortune 500 companies that received proposals in 2012, 2013 or both — have agreed to move towards annual elections. The aggregate market capitalization of these 91 companies exceeded one trillion dollars as of March 1, 2013.