The Corporate Monitoring Newsletter

Issue #13 - January 2002

Written by Mark Latham

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. Enron Debacle Raises Interest in Corporate Monitoring

2. Shareowner Proposal Campaign 2002

3. Politics and Corporate Governance

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1. ENRON DEBACLE RAISES INTEREST IN CORPORATE MONITORING

Earthquake! Enron has shifted the corporate governance landscape. Last year the SEC allowed management to exclude our Auditor Independence Proposal from the proxy, but now they no longer see auditor selection as an "ordinary business" decision exempt from shareowner input. We submitted the proposal again, to Fleetwood Enterprises on January 25, 2002, and expect it to appear in their proxy for shareowner vote in September.

Our proposal would have the auditor chosen by shareowner vote among competing candidates. Full text of proposals, recent press coverage, and arguments to the SEC are at http://www.corpmon.com .

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2. SHAREOWNER PROPOSAL CAMPAIGN 2002

We plan to submit our proxy advisor proposal again this year. This would give all shareowners access to independent professional advice on proxy voting. We may also draft a new proposal relating to policial influence, based on the ideas in "Democracy and Infomediaries" (see below).

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3. POLITICS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Our previous newsletters described my recent paper relating corporate governance and politics, entitled "Democracy and Infomediaries" (http://www.corpmon.com/Democracy.htm). I am now pursuing research to link its ideas to the political science literature, especially models of the power of special interests. I aim to interest political scientists in expanding the cross-pollination of the two fields.

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