The Shareholder Forum

supporting investor access

for the informed use of capital to produce goods and services

 

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.

 

 
Lex: Willamette
Published: January 13 2002 20:21 | Last Updated: January 13 2002 20:23

The war of the woodmen drags on. But it seems increasingly obvious that Willamette sees its own shareholders as enemies, as well as rival forest product group Weyerhaeuser. Or at least the 64 per cent of them who have agreed to tender their shares to Weyerhaeuser for $55 a share. That is an impressive mandate, particularly since up to 30 per cent of Willamette's shares are held by insiders.

That Willamette should continue to ignore its shareholders' wishes is no surprise. But its talks with Georgia Pacific about buying GP's building products unit or forming a joint venture look very much like a threat to scorch the trees. GP's asbestos exposure aside, it is difficult to see how acquiring GP's commodity assets or forming an alliance would fit with past strategy pronouncements. Almost two thirds of Willamette's shareholders clearly agree. Willamette's poison pill, and staggered board, protects its managers from its owners for now. But Weyerhaeuser is not going away. In June it should get three more of its nominees on to the board, providing the majority needed to dismantle the takeover defences. Hence Willamette's threat to strike a match.

The lawsuit filed by Franklin Mutual Advisers and WyserPratte Management to stop the GP negotiations is unlikely to succeed. Yet at least it demonstrates the interests of "real" investors and arbitrageurs are aligned. The tender vote should already have made that clear. But it is encouraging that an institutional shareholder is fighting the corporate governance battle rather than voting with its feet.

Copyright: The Financial Times Limited

 

 

 

Inquiries, requests to be included in email distribution lists, and suggestions of new Forum subjects may be addressed to inquiry@shareholderforum.com.

Publicly open programs of the Shareholder Forum are conducted for free participation of all shareholders of a subject company and any fiduciaries or professionals concerned with their decisions, according to the Forum’s stated "Conditions of Participation." In all cases, each participant is expected to make independent use of information obtained through the Forum, and participation is considered private unless the party specifically authorizes identification.

The information provided to Forum participants is intended for their private reference, and permission has not been granted for the republishing of any copyrighted material. The material presented on this web site is the responsibility of Gary Lutin, as chairman of the Shareholder Forum.

Shareholder Forum™ is a trademark owned by The Shareholder Forum, Inc., for the programs conducted since 1999 to support investor access to decision-making information. It should be noted that we have no responsibility for the services that Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., introduced for review in the Forum's 2010 "E-Meetings" program and had been offering for several years with the “Shareholder Forum” name, and we have asked Broadridge to use a different name that does not suggest our support or endorsement.