July 3, 2012 Forum Report: Rights and Responsibilities of Corporate Investment

The Shareholder Forum^TM`

Fair Investor Access

This public program was initiated in collaboration with The Conference Board Task Force on Corporate/Investor Engagement and with Thomson Reuters support of communication technologies. The Forum is providing continuing reports of the issues that concern this program's participants, as summarized in the January 5, 2015 Forum Report of Conclusions.

See also the subsequent interview addressing distinctions between director responsibilities for the corporation and the long term interests of shareholders:

July 17, 2012, Lynn A. Stout of Cornell Law School interviewed by David Cay Johnston for Reuters TV (video): "The Biggest Misconception About Shareholder Value"

Forum Report: Fair Investor Access

Rights and Responsibilities of Corporate Investment

Responding to last week’s distribution relating to Lynn Stout’s new book, The Shareholder Value Myth, Forum participants have encouraged our attention also to these recently presented views:

While the Shareholder Forum is not planning to conduct a program directly addressing this scholarly debate, the growing controversy raises very practical, important questions about the fundamental rights and responsibilities of corporate investment. These issues will clearly be relevant to all of your decisions about investments, or about winning the support of investors, including the decisions being addressed in the Forum’s new program to establish standards of “Fair Investor Access.”

I hope that you will also consider these issues to be a suitable subject of thinking during your celebration tomorrow of our “unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

GL – July 3, 2012

Gary Lutin
Chairman, The Shareholder Forum
575 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022
Tel: 212-605-0335
Email: gl@shareholderforum.com

This Forum program was open, free of charge, to anyone concerned with investor interests in the development of marketplace standards for expanded access to information for securities valuation and shareholder voting decisions. As stated in the posted Conditions of Participation, the purpose of this public Forum's program was to provide decision-makers with access to information and a free exchange of views on the issues presented in the program's Forum Summary. Each participant was expected to make independent use of information obtained through the Forum, subject to the privacy rights of other participants. It is a Forum rule that participants will not be identified or quoted without their explicit permission.

This Forum program was initiated in 2012 in collaboration with The Conference Board and with Thomson Reuters support of communication technologies to address issues and objectives defined by participants in the 2010 "E-Meetings" program relevant to broad public interests in marketplace practices. The website is being maintained to provide continuing reports of the issues addressed in the program, as summarized in the January 5, 2015 Forum Report of Conclusions.

Inquiries about this Forum program and requests to be included in its distribution list may be addressed to access@shareholderforum.com.

The information provided to Forum participants is intended for their private reference, and permission has not been granted for the republishing of any copyrighted material. The material presented on this web site is the responsibility of Gary Lutin, as chairman of the Shareholder Forum.

Shareholder Forum™ is a trademark owned by The Shareholder Forum, Inc., for the programs conducted since 1999 to support investor access to decision-making information. It should be noted that we have no responsibility for the services that Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., introduced for review in the Forum's 2010 "E-Meetings" program and has since been offering with the “Shareholder Forum” name, and we have asked Broadridge to use a different name that does not suggest our support or endorsement.