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.
This post describes the results produced so far during the 2013 proxy season as a result of the work that the Shareholder Rights Project (SRP) has done on behalf of SRP-represented clients. Thus far, this work has already resulted in the following 2013 outcomes:
- 19 boards of S&P 500 and Fortune 500 companies declassified following the adoption of agreed-upon management proposals at 2013 annual meetings; and
- 13 precatory proposals passed at the 2013 annual meetings of S&P 500 and Fortune 500 companies, with an average support of 78%.
Further details about these results (including lists of all the relevant S&P 500 and Fortune 500 companies) are provided below. We note that these results add to those obtained during 2012 in which the work of the SRP and SRP-represented investors resulted in: