Upcoming Bank of America meeting in LA Times
April 17, 2009
The LA Times ran a piece today about the upcoming meeting at Bank of America (here’s the meeting page on PD). As noted in the article, CtW Investment Group is leading a “vote no” campaign against CEO Kenneth Lewis, alleging that he showed poor judgment in the Countrywide and Merrill acquisitions and “transformed a bank well-positioned to weather the financial crisis into one of its most costly casualties” (according CtW executive director Bill Patterson).
The article gives airtime to both sides on the issue. I found it hard to tell from this whether BofA will indeed be in a strong market position coming out of the current crisis, and further whether that would have anything to do with Lewis’s leadership (and particularly these two decisions). These seem to be the important considerations for evaluating Lewis’s decisions and performance.
The big proxy advisers and institutions have not yet announced how they’re going to vote, which is why we don’t have any advanced disclosures from our sources on the meeting page. Sign up for BofA alerts if you want to be notified when we do find out how our sources plan to vote.
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James McRitchie | April 18, 2009 at 11:22 am
Doing better on Citigroup.
Citigroup
AFSCME voted against 8 directors, mostly current and former members of the company’s audit committee, and has a resolution seeking hold-through-retirement for shares granted senior execs. RiskMetrics advised its clients to vote against of the six: Deutch, Armstrong, Belda, and Mulcahy. ProxyDemocracy.org shows CBIS and Trillium also voting against the 4, and Trillium voting against 2 more of the AFSCME 8. All three funds voted for the hold-through-retirement resolution.
Evelyn Y. Davis has a proposal to require disclosure of prior government service by employees. All three funds voted against it, probably because they already have to report for the prior five years. The Firefighters’ Pension System of the City of Kansas City, Missouri Connecticut’s has a proposal for reporting on political contributions. All three funds reported through ProxyDemocracy.org voted for it. The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia seeks a report on Citi’s credit-card lending practices. Again, all three funds voted in favor.
Richard A. Dee’s proposal to nominate two candidates for each directorship isn’t supported by any of the three funds, probably because there is little point to have the company give choices between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumb. The Free Enterprise Action Fund has a resolution requesting a report on carbon principles but none of the three funds are fooled by Steven Milloy’s effort to destigmatize the conventional use of coal. They all voted against it.
A resolution by Connecticut Retirement Plans & Trust Funds would require the company to disclose information on potential conflicts of interest for compensation consultants. All three funds voted in favor. William Steiner proposal would allow shareowners with 10% of the shares to amend articles/bylaws/charter and call special meetings. Again, all three funds voted in favor of it, as well as Ken Steiner’s proposal for cumulative voting. Need advice on how to vote? ProxyDemocracy.org frequently provides the information you need.