May 10, 2012
Allegations of Empty Voting, Vote Buying and Secret Share Accumulations: Nothing New
I found this recent Dealbook piece entitled “The Curious Case of the Telus Proxy Battle” because I have long been fascinated by the problems of overvoting and similar anomalies in the shareholder meeting process that impedes the integrity of a meeting’s voting results. Another case in point is the article that Carl Hagberg mentioned in the his Shareholder Service Optimizer recently about the hedgie who inadvertently let slip that he was planning to vote both his own shares – plus a nearly equal number that he “borrowed”…from himself. Hopefully, the SEC will get around to fixing these serious problems as its proxy plumbing rulemaking gets off the ground. A few days ago, Telus withdrew its proposal in the face of the allegations…