股东维权人士进来几个品种,but Richard Ferlauto is a little more unconventional than most. For a start, the tiny pension fund he oversees for staffers at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees doesn't own enough shares of anything to exert much sway. With $700 million in assets, it is dwarfed by the tens of billions in capital that allow such behemoths as the California Public Employees' Retirement System and TIAA-CREF to throw their weight around in executive suites.
What's more, despite his senior position at AFSCME, a big union with a strong liberal-Democratic bent, Ferlauto makes an improbable labor movement agitator. He grew up in a solidly Republican household in suburban New Jersey, even volunteering back in seventh grade to play Republican candidate Richard Nixon in a mock presidential debate. But the 48-year-old hasn't let that keep him from emerging as one of the most outspoken and influential critics of corporate America amid the raging battle over how companies should be governed in this era of seemingly endless financial frauds. Longtime AFSCME International president Gerald McEntee hired Ferlauto as director of pension investment policy in 2002, when scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom were still front-page news, to agitate for change in the corporate world. Since then Ferlauto has transformed the federation into one of the most activist institutions in the country -- and one that gets results despite its paltry assets.
In the past 18 months, Ferlauto, formerly an executive with proxy-advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services, has been a driving force behind major governance concessions by Circuit City Stores, Marsh & McLennan Cos. and Ryder Systems. And he and AFSCME almost single-handedly pressured the Securities and Exchange Commission into proposing to allow shareholders to nominate candidates for corporate boards directly, a dramatic departure from historical practice. Business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, have vehemently opposed it.
How has Ferlauto done it? By using AFSCME's tiny in-house fund as a platform for proposing shareholder resolutions at annual meetings, while relying on the secondary clout of the union's nearly 1.4 million members, whose pension assets are invested in a number of non-AFSCME plans. The union's own fund typically holds only a few thousand shares of the companies it targets, hardly enough to gain credibility at widely held concerns with hundreds of millions of shares outstanding. But AFSCME's members participate in other pension schemes, mostly state-run plans, that total $1.4 trillion in assets. Although these funds include a big chunk of money invested on behalf of non-AFSCME members (the union says it's impossible to determine exactly how much because the various defined benefit plans don't allocate assets to individual beneficiaries), Ferlauto ultimately can hold himself up as a protector of the retirement security of a wide swath of the labor force. And he's exploiting that influence for all it's worth.
“安然没有孤立，”费尔劳托说，注意到养老金制度，其中AFSCME成员们注册的休斯顿公司2001年崩溃损失了13亿美元。他说，这笔收费升至300亿美元 - 这些计划股权资产的150亿美元 - 在2001年和2002年的丑闻市场衰退的整体损害中造成的。“许多董事会由帝国首席执行官主导没有支票和平衡，没有股东的声音，“费尔劳托斯说。“一世
我试图使市场有效，因为他们应该为所有者创造这个声音。“
Ferlauto的努力赢得了他对其他活动家的尊重。“富裕和AFSCME已经掌握了一些问题，”俄罗斯人康沃尔·赫克科克说，该律师康沃尔·赫克科克（Cornive Hitchcock）在纽约比较的合并银行等机构投资者的治理问题上提供律师，这是一家长期联盟银行，该银行有10亿美元的工人退休储蓄。亚博赞助欧冠在它的朗文家庭共同基金中。“他应该得到很多信誉。”
“他是机构企业活动中的劳动活动家中的领导者之一，”威尔明顿，威尔明顿，律师事务所赠款＆艾森霍夫的校长和创始合伙人，威尔明顿的校长和艾森霍夫在公司和证券诉讼中代表了一些机构投资者。亚博赞助欧冠
但Ferlauto进入治理改革也是抵销联邦的敌人的公平份额。AFSCME的投资者签名问题上的企业代理商 - 因此向导演提名委员会 - 一直是避雷针。第二届2003年10月关于代理机构的提案将要求公司在年度会议上分发给投资者的代理投票上的某些股东的董事会席位。公司担心投资者 - 特别是左倾斜的联盟养老基金 - 访问代理人将允许活动家提名营养师，他们将推动社会正义议程，而不是专注于为股主创造价值。
“我对代理访问权限，”联合包裹服务的首席执行官和圆桌会议，一个基于华盛顿的首席执行官的商业圆桌会议，致力于倡导商业友好的公共政策。“公司与具有独立和透明的董事会管理他们的事务是重要的，但真正代表所有股东。选择委员会仍然需要找到自己的被提名者。”
由于强烈的企业游说努力，部分更广泛的反对SEC在威廉·唐纳森主席的侵略性监管立场，该机构的代理提案现在似乎已经却死了。唐纳森透过争议的新规则，通过加入五个人委员会的两名民主党对他的两个共和党人来加入对冲基金和共同基金的推动，希望避免另外3-2投票对有争议的问题表示，人们近在咫尺。证券委员会还允许多家公司，包括巨型保险公司美国国际集团，以忽视AFSCME股东建议，该提案试图在证券交易所流程停滞后基于公司的基础上取得代理机构。上个月，联盟通过将AIG致电法院努力迫使它在可能年度会议上纳入代理人的访问提案。
But running into a roadblock on that issue isn't preventing Ferlauto and AFSCME from going after corporate America even harder during the current proxy season, which will reach its height when the bulk of publicly traded U.S. companies hold their annual meetings in April and May. Among the large, widely held companies the union is targeting with a variety of governance proposals are Amgen, Bank of New York, Bed Bath & Beyond, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Home Depot, Ingersoll-Rand Co., Maytag Corp. and Siebel Systems. Ferlauto's agenda focuses in particular on more closely tying executive pay to company performance, removing antitakeover measures such as poison pills and ensuring that companies heed majority shareholder votes on annual meeting resolutions.
Ferlauto代表联盟的行动主义
成员可能会让那些在东黑克里克斯郊上上层新泽西郊区成长的人在成长时让那些认识他。石油巨头Mobil公司的管理级化学家的儿子主持了Ferlauto记得作为一个“中等共和党”家庭的家庭，他热切地接受了他的七年级教师的志愿者，志愿者将尼克松打到民主党人'Hubert Humphrey1968年的课堂辩论。“我相信他会以光荣的方式让美国从越南出来，”他回忆道。
But in 1978, while studying philosophy and economics during his senior year at Georgetown University, Ferlauto read a book that would change his life.北方将再次上升：20世纪80年代的养老金，政治和权力，由自由主义知识分子杰里米·里瓜和兰迪理发师，劝告日常工人使用他们作为企业股东的权力 - 通过养老基金 - 反对裁员，工厂重新划分和其他借调的抗冲政策。
毕业后Ferlauto放弃了他的计划，成为一个哲学教师，开始努力帮助非营利组织和贸易协会改善很多劳动人民。但他已经注意到追求基于市场的社会不公平的解决方案。“我的一生，我一直在寻找市场，市场可以用来为社区赋予社区的工作和经济机会，并回报经济利益，”他解释道。“这是一种社会导向和经济导向。”
College Ferlauto加入了向美国服务的志愿者，被称为国内和平军团，他与非营利组织合作，帮助康涅狄格州托尼费尔菲尔德县的低收入租户进行撤消。“我们正在寻找投资住房的替代资本来源，”他回忆道。一些养老基金涉及。这一经验激起了Ferlauto对养老金如何影响公共政策的兴趣。
In 1982 he cut short graduate studies in public policy at New York's Hunter College to join girlfriend Hillary Horn, an activist for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, on a three-week protest march. Ferlauto had met Horn when she was working for the United Farm Workers in Connecticut. The FLOC march took them from Toledo, Ohio, to the annual meeting of Campbell Soup Co. in Camden, New Jersey, where the group, through its pension fund, pushed to win better pay for seasonal tomato pickers. The union's resolution failed, but the group subsequently negotiated a deal with management that established a pay floor and access to health care benefits for the farmworkers.
“这是我的第一次年度会议，”雷劳托，“，它睁开了我的目光，以塑造企业决策如何。”
Ferlauto wound up marrying Horn and worked mostly on housing issues for much of the 1980s and early 1990s. From 1985 through 1987 he was chief of staff for New Jersey State Assemblyman David Schwartz, a Democrat who chaired the committee on housing and urban affairs. In 1988 he and Schwartz co-founded the American Affordable Housing Institute at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. While at the AAHI, Ferlauto advised the staff of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on ways that employers and pension funds could help workers afford homes. He also co-authored two books with Schwartz,A New Housing Policy for America（由Thenu.s的前言。参议员比尔布拉德利）和雇主辅助住房：1990年代的福利。In late 1992, Ferlauto left the AAHI for the Center for Policy Alternatives, a nonpartisan think tank that worked with states and public pension funds to attract capital for housing and economic development.
五年后，Ferlauto完全拥抱股东激活主义。在1997年初成为AFL-CIO的全职顾问后，他帮助建立了其投资办公室及其公司治理计划，往往起草和推广代理投票政策。差不多两年后，1998年12月，机构股东服务聘请了Ferlauto作为代理选民服务董事总经理。在这一角色中，他建议养老金计划关于如何投票他们的代理。
截至2001年底，随着安德龙在丑闻下面爆发，AFSCME首席执行官开始感知公司治理是影响联盟成员金融安全的主要问题。他寻求Ferlauto，将他在ISS发行到联邦的专业知识。“我们认为需要捍卫我们会员的退休资产，”McEnee说，他已经前往Afscme 24年。“所以我们决定发动侵略性的养老金计划。”
直到那么Afscme只偶尔弯曲了它作为股东的肌肉。在20世纪80年代，它将少数公司推动到南非的持股，作为抗议该国的种族隔离。大约五年前，每年开始提交一些股东决议，要求公司治理改革。
在Ferlauto的影响下，Afscme成为活动家领导者。他在2003年将股东提出的股东提出提出为17家公司，这是他招聘后的第一个完整的代理赛季，并随后去年22次。在早期的胜利中，大多数选票有利于2003年在电路城，Pitney Bowes和Ryder中取消毒药的建议;所有三个撤回了他们的药丸 - 抗真的条款通常要求在AFSCME去年制定类似的提案后发出大量股票。2003年又一次成功于2003年伟大的湖泊化学公司同意提出的一项提案，即其所有董事都代表年大选，这一过程称为董事会的解密，而不是有一群董事，而是服务交错的董事。这一举动追逐了大多数投票给AFSCME解决方案来解密。
But Ferlauto's signature issue has been the effort to win the right for investor-nominated director candidates to be included on proxy ballots. In analyzing the scandals that sent companies like Enron, WorldCom and Adelphia Communications into bankruptcy in 2001 and 2002, Ferlauto seized on a common thread: malleable boards of directors that were dominated by company insiders and friends of the CEO. If shareholders could nominate directors who they believed would better represent their interests, governance would improve, he and other activists reasoned. But under existing securities and corporate laws, investors can't put candidates on proxy ballots. Instead they have to mount costly campaigns that require sending separate ballots to all owners of the company's stock.
“一世t would be the most significant reform," Ferlauto asserts. "It empowers owners to have a voice that they don't have in the boardroom. This is all about creating wealth and shareholder value for the long term."
在2002年晚些时候开始,Ferlauto着手使that vision a reality. AFSCME proposed resolutions to be voted on at the 2003 annual meetings of six major corporations -- AOL Time Warner, Bank of New York, Citigroup, Eastman Kodak Co., ExxonMobil Corp. and Sears, Roebuck & Co. Each called for allowing shareholders to nominate director candidates who would be included on the official proxy ballot. Predictably, the companies cried foul. And the SEC issued so-called no-action letters that permitted them to omit the resolutions from their proxies without the threat of enforcement actions. The agency, however, also promised to create new rules that would facilitate shareholder nominations in the future.
到2003年10月，SEC提出了这些新规则，该规则将允许大，长期股东在一个相当禁止的情况下提名董事 - 主要是当公司忽视股东提案之前的大多数投票时。该机构的计划在去年生成了纪录的评论信件，并产生了罕见的圆形圆桌会议讨论。尽管规定了严格的条件，但在规则中进行了代理访问，圆桌会议等团体圆桌会议和商会强烈反对。如果提案颁布，圆桌会议甚至威胁要起诉。
"This is capitalism, not democracy," says Morton Pierce, a partner at New York City law firm Dewey Ballantine who represents a number of large corporations. "If I don't like how a company is run, it's really easy -- I sell my stock."
在商业大厅的反对意见中 - 以及对SEC董事长Donaldson的令人惊讶的活动家任期的更广泛的，选举年的反弹 - 代理访问提案已经停滞不前。
Ferlauto继续尝试通过针对沼泽＆MCLennan，Walt Disney Co.，Halliburton Co.，Eastman Kodak和Aig的决议来提起代理访问。他的努力在去年3月份得到了早期的推动，当时玛什同意任命AFSCME和其他股东认为可接受的其他股东的外部董事。然后事情开始走下坡路。Afscme于10月份提交的迪士尼提案与Calpers，纽约国家共同退休基金和伊利诺伊州的投资委员会，将允许股东提名人出现在迪士尼2006年的代理上。但是，在12月底，美国证券交易委员会撤销了早期的决定，允许迪士尼在上个月举行的年度会议上排除提案。然后，在2月7日，该机构通过向Halliburton发布禁令信来击中代理人访问努力，允许公司从其代理AFSCME和康涅狄格州和纽约市公共养老基金提出的建议中排除亚博篮球怎么下串。在信中，美国证券交易委员会在其代理访问规则建议中概述的脚本概述的立场，该提案中呼吁寻求在公司代理人批准的企业代理上允许同一目标的各个股东的决议。这给了绿灯到AIG，柯达和任何其他公司，即AFSCME可能在当前的代理赛季中忽视联邦的提案。
Eighteen days later AFSCME filed suit against AIG in federal court, seeking to force the company to include the union's proposal on its current proxy and submit it for a shareholder vote in May. If the SEC won't follow through on its original plan, Ferlauto says, "the only other venue is through the courts." AIG declines to comment. Securities lawyer Eisenhofer says the law governing the case is complex and murky but adds that the suit "definitely has a chance of succeeding."
证券第二次提案仍在等待，但鉴于唐纳森的政治压力，它不太可能看到一天的光线。时间可能不多了。民主委员会哈维金奇计划计划今年夏天下降，并在哥伦比亚大学返回他的教学工作。布什政府可能会花时间命名一个替代品，让委员会陷入僵局。仍然，Goldschmid仍然谨慎乐观，Donaldson将推动计划。“我希望在离开委员会之前，它将被颁布，”他说。“如果他未能采取行动，那么普通的人会说它会玷污他的主席。”Donaldson拒绝评论。
其他人更悲观 - 或者也许是现实的。哥伦比亚州法学院公司治理中心主任John Coffens表示，“我认为证券未能通过该提案。”“我认为它在水中死了。”
FERLAUTO, HOWEVER, WILL KEEP RAILING AGAINST corporate policies that he believes hurt AFSCME's members. During the current proxy season, he's focusing on enforcing the will of shareholders at companies that have made a habit of ignoring it. To this end, AFSCME has proposed that Maytag create a special board committee to deal with shareholder proposals that receive a majority vote yet are not implemented by the company. The committee would have to meet with the proponents of such measures to discuss them following their passage. Maytag has failed to act on several majority shareholder votes in favor of declassifying its board. AFSCME filed similar proposals at Gillette Co., Morgan Stanley and Raytheon Co., but withdrew them when the companies agreed to declassify.
Ferlauto还继续反对执行薪酬滥用行政薪酬。AFSCME希望Adobe Systems，Amgen及床浴室的董事会及以后能够通过行使申请拨款来施加两年的股东，以便通过行使申请。（Adobe表示它会反对措施。）联盟还提出AT＆T公司和Bristol-Myers Squibb将限制性股票奖励的归属联系起来，以实现具体的绩效里程碑，而不是时间的流逝，争论此类奖项可以导致巨额支付给执行差劲的高管。（这两个公司都说他们将在今年春天的代理人陈述中回应提案。）
AFSCME继续攻击一般治理滥用，如毒药和交错板。2月28日，纽约银行表示，它将在针对它的AFSCME代理提案之后取消避孕药。类似的决议上个月在ADC电信年会上取得了65％的投票。联盟还旨在瞄准Siebel Systems and Ingersoll-Rand的交错板，Ferlauto说原则上同意自愿解散其董事会。一个Ingersoll发言人表示，该公司考虑到去年的AFSCME提案，占据了81％的股东选票，但他补充说，“我们没有职位，可以分类地说。”
“我们的商标正在识别公司治理的新方法，以达到股东和董事会之间的权力不平衡，并获得其他机构投资者的不平衡，”Ferlauto说。亚博赞助欧冠“一旦我们识别公司，我们就不会放手，直到它做出适当的回应。”