Yesterday, I participated in a Social Investment Forum (SIF) webinar on a round up of the 2010 proxy season with fellow presenters Meg Voorhes from SIF, Conrad Mackerron from As You Sow Foundation, Sanford Lewis of the Strategic Counsel on Corporate Accountability, and moderated by Stu Dalheim from Calvert.
From the other speakers it was a bumper year for shareholder support for social and environmental proposals at companies, with two proposals receiving majority support and many more in the 20-30 percent support range. While not including broker non-votes has clearly had an impact there would appear to be growing support for such proposals and the disasters faced by Massey Energy and BP will only fuel (if you’ll forgive the pun) that support.
From me it was the usual “doom-and-gloom-what-a-mess-compensation-is-hardly-anyone’s-got-say-on-pay-and-already-there-have-been-three-nay-on-pay-votes-but-maybe-we-are-getting-the-tools-to-sort-it-out” kind of presentation. Ironically enough, given the audience, BP came in for some criticism – I mentioned my blog that found safety at the bottom of the list of performance measures – and some praise – soon to leave CEO Tony Hayward is not going to walk away with some megabuck golden pay for failure parachute as he would do if he were CEO of Occidental Petroleum, for example. From what I can make out he’s just going to collect a year’s salary and maybe a reduced pension. Of course that’s going to mean a lot of money, but it’s small change compared to what he would have received as the head of a US major multinational.
The call was recorded and if you’re a SIF member you can listen to it at your leisure.
Paul Hodgson - Senior Research Associate
