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The Shareholder Forum™ Purpose The Shareholder Forum provides all decision-makers – from the ultimate owners of capital to the corporate managers who use their capital, and all of the professionals in between – with reliably effective access to the information and views participants consider relevant to their respective responsibilities for the common objective of using capital to produce goods and services. Having pioneered what became the widespread practice of "corporate access" events over two decades ago, the Forum continues to refine its "Direct Access" practices to assure effective support of marketplace interests. Access Policies To provide the required investor access without regulatory constraints, the Forum developed policies and practices allowing it to function as an SEC-defined independent moderator. We also adopted well-established publishing standards to assure essential participant privacy and communication rights. These carefully defined and thoroughly tested Forum policies are the foundation of our unique marketplace resource for clearly fair access to information and exchanges of views. History We have been doing this for more than two decades. The Forum programs were initiated in 1999 by the CFA Society New York (at the time known as the New York Society of Security Analysts) with lead investor and former corporate investment banker Gary Lutin as guest chairman to address the professional interests of the Society’s members. Independently supported by Mr. Lutin since 2001, the Forum’s public programs – often in collaboration with the CFA Society as well as with other educational institutions such as the Columbia Schools of Business and Journalism, the Yale School of Management and The Conference Board – have achieved wide recognition for their effective definition of both company-specific and marketplace issues, followed by an orderly exchange of the information and views needed to resolve them. The Forum's ability to convene all key decision-making constituencies and influence leaders has been applied to subjects ranging from corporate control contests to the establishment of consensus marketplace standards for fair disclosure, and has been relied upon by virtually every major U.S. fund manager and the many other investors who have participated in programs that addressed their interests. Commitment The Forum welcomes suggestions for its continuing support of fair access to the information needed by both shareholders and corporate managers. Responding to the recent increases in investor engagement and activism, we have established a strong policy commitment to supporting corporate managers who wish to provide the leadership expected of them by assuring orderly reviews of issues. We will of course also continue to welcome the initiation of company-specific programs by shareholders concerned with the use of their capital to produce goods and services, and we naturally remain committed to addressing general marketplace interests in collaboration with educational institutions and publishers. |
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Gary Lutin Chairman, The Shareholder Forum
Gary Lutin has been chairing the Shareholder Forum programs since 1999, when he was invited by the New York Society of Security Analysts (“NYSSA,” since renamed CFA Society New York) to serve as the guest chairman of their pioneering project to show how investors could obtain the information they needed for buy-sell and voting decisions. The Forum's influential and sometimes controversial series of company-specific demonstration cases have led the way to many of the marketplace practices and regulatory reforms that currently support investor interests, ranging from a collaborative dot-com era program with Amazon.com that established standards for both reliable metrics and fair disclosure, to the investor challenges of companies such as Computer Associates, Dell, National Presto and Willamette that established the foundations of professionalized activism, which in turn stimulated both private and public Forum programs supporting corporate management responsibilities to resist activist-driven factional pressures for short-term policies that are inconsistent with a company's use of capital for its sustainable production of goods and services. Other widely followed public programs have been organized to address investor interests in broadly applicable marketplace practices, such as executive compensation and shareholder engagement, convening all of the key constituencies to establish consensus definitions of the issues for both private and public policy decisions. (See Archive of Publicly Open Programs Since 1999.) Prior to his activities chairing Shareholder Forum programs, Mr. Lutin had been the lead investor in acquisitions of companies with the management oversight of J. Keith Louden. Starting his career in investment banking, he had founded Lutin & Company in 1976 when he was 28 years old, and within five years established the firm’s clear dominance in the niche for capital access and acquisitions supporting the growth of competitively superior mid‑size companies, making it the model for a subsequent generation of independent investment banks. Mr. Lutin had been trained at Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Weeden & Company, the Committee for Economic Development, and Salomon Bros. & Hutzler, and had graduated from Yale University in 1969 with an economics degree. Mr. Lutin can be reached at The Shareholder Forum, 590 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022, by telephone at 212-605-0335 or by email at gl@shareholderforum.com. revised 2024 |
