Issues Update
CalPERS Calls on White House for Proxy Access Support
June 17, 2010
Joe Dear, CalPERS Chief Investment Officer, today sent a strong message to White House advisor Valerie Jarrett calling on her and the Obama Administration to publicly oppose the Senate's proxy access amendment imposing a 5 percent ownership requirement.
Email to Ms. Jarrett:
The institutional investor community was shocked to hear that the Senate supports adding a 5% share ownership threshold to the provision that clarifies the SEC’s authority to promulgate a rule. This will gut the proxy access provision and is completely unacceptable to responsible long-term investors such as CalPERS. It will make the proxy access provision totally unusable in the case of many major corporations. For example,
- There is not a single 5% shareholder of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Microsoft, IBM or ExxonMobile.
- The top 10 pension funds do not even own more than 3% of the shares outstanding for these 5 large companies.
- Of the top 10 pension shareholders, there is not a single owner of more than .5% of the shares outstanding; and in fact, the average share holding of the top 10 pension shareholders does not even exceed 1/4 of 1%.
CalPERS strongly encourages you and the Obama administration to publicly oppose the Senate's proxy access amendment imposing a 5% ownership requirement. Please call upon House and Senate conferees to reject this harmful change.
Please let us know if you have any questions. We stand ready to support your additional inquiry.
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