The Corporate Monitoring Newsletter

Issue #19 - August 2004

Written by Mark Latham

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. Our Best-Ever Shareowner Proposal Voting Results

2. “Vote Your Stock” First Draft Completed

3. New Working Paper on Civic Politics Infomediaries
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1. OUR BEST-EVER SHAREOWNER PROPOSAL VOTING RESULTS

Voting results from the 2004 proxy season have now been disclosed in
recent 10-Q filings. The Corporate Monitoring Project’s proposals
received their highest-ever level of shareowner support this year.

Our Voting Leverage Proposal, appearing in proxies for the first
time, won an average voting support of 8.2%, quite respectable for a
hitherto unknown idea. It was in the proxies of Visteon [VC] and
Calpine [CPN].

Our Proxy Advisor Proposal was supported by 20.1% of shares voted at
Oregon Steel [OS], breaking its previous record of 17.8%. At USEC
[USU] it earned 8% of the vote, for an average this year of 14%
supporting Proxy Advisor, compared with a 6.7% average for previous
years.

See www.corpmon.com for details on these proposals.
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2. “VOTE YOUR STOCK” FIRST DRAFT COMPLETED

We can break the board of directors’ monopoly on convenient voting
advice for individual investors, by building a website with options
like “Vote all my stock the way CalPERS votes its stock.” The same
tool can also let individual beneficial owners take voting authority
for stocks held for them by institutional investors. This paper
shows the benefits of such a power shift, and the future changes it
will make possible.

I have (finally) completed this draft and submitted it to
www.ssrn.com
See www.corpmon.com/publications.htm – link “Vote Your Stock”
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3. NEW WORKING PAPER ON CIVIC POLITICS INFOMEDIARIES

I am now writing a paper on how to adapt our Proxy Advisor proposal
to civic politics. This is partly in response to the book “Voting
With Dollars” by Ackerman and Ayres, which makes a campaign finance
reform proposal broadly resembling the Proxy Advisor proposal.
There are some key differences however, and I argue that my ideas
from corporate governance can foster new advances in the
effectiveness of civic democracy. I hope to complete a first draft
in September 2004.

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