The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) wants Apple to change the way it elects members to its board, but Apple is reportedly resisting the proposed change.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]According to the Wall Street Journal, an Apple board member can keep their seat with a single yes vote if the election is uncontested. Calpers wants members to keep their seats by winning a majority vote.
Calpers is forcing a vote by submitting a shareholder resolution at Apple’s annual meeting in February 2011. Calpers says the current system does not make members accountable and makes it difficult to oust a board member.
Apple isn’t the only company Calpers is requesting the change from. It has submitted the same request to 58 U.S. companies.
That makes sense. After all, the Apple board has been busy pissing shareholder money away for like…oh, wait.
Calpers can suck an egg. They want Apple to be like all the other corporations that can’t innovate because of majority stockholder rule. Where stockholders don’t give a squat about a company that knows more than them how to make money. They want their pet economic theories to hold sway. Which means they think Apple should be more like IBM and HP and Dell and the rest of the companies that have no clue how Apple does what it does so well.
Was this generically handed to everyone that Calpers invested in? As Jared points out, it isn’t like Apple’s stock performance warrants an activist shareholder…
That’s certainly what it sounds like to me.
Not sure what Calpers is fussing about. The whole one vote rule requires that no one contest. But if someone does contest then that one yes vote is meaningless.
Now if it was one yes vote period then they might have something to yell about.