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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.

"Fair Access" Home Page

"Fair Access" Program Reference

 

Related Projects 2012-2019

For graphed analyses of company and related industry returns, see

Returns on Corporate Capital

See also analyses of

Shareholder Support Rankings

 
 
 

 

For a subsequently published joint statement of the co-chairpersons of the Task Force referenced below, see

 

To download a printable copy of this report, click here.

 

Forum Report: Fair Investor Access

 

The Conference Board’s Task Force Definition of Responsibilities for Investor Access

The reports

Continuing search for examples addressing long term value enhancement

Concluding a year and a half of research and debate, The Conference Board’s Task Force on Corporate/Investor Engagement has published reports this morning of its recommendations, guidelines and policy considerations.

The staff and advisors of The Conference Board Corporate Governance Center will welcome Forum participants’ comments on the Task Force views, which are intended to provide a foundation for continuing discussion and a variety of case-specific applications.

The reports

The Task Force’s work is presented in the following three reports, published by The Conference Board:

Recommendations of the Task Force on Corporate/Investor Engagement (20 pages, 441 KB, in PDF format)

Guidelines for Investor Engagement (35 pages, 1,920 KB, in PDF format)

The Conference Board Governance Center White Paper, by Barbara Blackford, Donna Dabney, Suneela Jain, and James D. Small III: “What Is the Optimal Balance in the Relative Roles of Management, Directors, and Investors in the Governance of Public Corporations?” (76 pages, 999 KB, in PDF format)

It should be noted that the “White Paper” includes a very useful review of the continuing evolution of corporate organization and capital markets, supported by The Conference Board’s authoritative statistics on the composition of institutional investment.

Continuing search for examples addressing long term value enhancement

We will continue to welcome proposals of a suitable activist situation for a Forum project to apply the Task Force recommendations in a real marketplace resolution of substantive investor interests. The past year’s review of situations, however, is not encouraging. The increasingly standardized activist playbooks have generated the development of similarly standardized professional defense playbooks that avoid attention to actual shareholder interests by either attacking or appeasing the activist. To justify Forum support, one side or the other must provide responsible leadership to address issues relevant to a company’s long term value enhancement.

GL – March 11, 2014

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.