The Corporate Monitoring Newsletter

Issue #12 - September 2001

Written by Mark Latham

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. New paper: "Democracy and Infomediaries"

2. SAVI Proposal 17.8% Support Confirmed at Equus II

3. Shareowner Proposal Plans for 2001-2002

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1. NEW PAPER: "DEMOCRACY AND INFOMEDIARIES"

Corporate monitoring is likely to influence politics for two reasons. First, voting by shareowners has many parallels with voting by citizens, so a system to improve shareowner democracy could be applied to political democracy also. Second, corporations have considerable political influence, so increased shareowner oversight may redirect that influence, especially because the political interests of diversified shareowners differ from those of management.

See http://www.corpmon.com/Democracy.htm -- comments invited!

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2. SAVI PROPOSAL 17.8% SUPPORT CONFIRMED AT EQUUS II

The most recent shareowner vote on our Shareowners’ Alternative Voting Information proposal was the highest yet in our two-year campaign -- 17.8%, at closed-end fund Equus II. We reported this earlier as a preliminary number based on the tally announced at the May 3 shareowners’ meeting. It is now confirmed in Equus II’s recent 10-Q filing, showing 656,475 shares voted for and 3,022,050 against.

Text of proposal is at http://www.corpmon.com/SAVI-EQS.htm

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3. SHAREOWNER PROPOSAL PLANS FOR 2001-2002

For the majority of firms, with annual meetings around April 2002, the shareowner proposal submission deadlines are around November 2001. The Corporate Monitoring Project plans to submit several proposals this year, including SAVI (to hire proxy voting advisors), Auditor Independence (selecting the auditor by shareowner vote), and perhaps a new proposal relating to policial influence, based on the ideas in "Democracy and Infomediaries".

Save Lucent! Shareowner Jeff Frontz plans to submit the SAVI proposal to Lucent this year -- see http://www.savelucent.com .

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