Attempts have been underway for some time to have companies put complaints of small minority shareholders into corporate proxies at company expense. Under the Obama administration, pressure has been building for additional regulation along these lines.
Like other added restrictions on business, they serve little purpose, other than a play to a voter block that feels the corporation’s primary care is not its product or service, jobs and profits that enable it to operate, but to seek secondary social goals, almost simultaneously.
Anyone with hands-on business experience knows it is impossible to focus on both at the same time and be profitable. Only community organizers and social scientists with no top-level business experience think that way.
This is unfair to all shareholders because many of these activist minority shareholders are not really interested in genuine company matters. Their primary goals are societal concerns that ought to be rectified by federal, state and local government.
For years, they have pestered corporations to have changes made in corporate activity which the vast majority of shareholders would not want. Today, corporations are being nudged by government to actually submit much of the proposals into their corporate proxies.
In addition: In many instances, such proxies may make it easier for takeovers to be made. It is not always a given that making it easier to foster corporate takeovers, is in the best interests of all stockholders.
The objectives of many of the takeover artists are often solely for quick, short-term profits. That may not be the long term interest of the corporation or most of its shareholders.
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