| *Cartoon
By TCL Staff Member
Mark Magee
 As
Expected:
Farmer Brothers Holders Vote Down Investment Company Proposal
By Laura Smitherman
Bloomberg News, December
26, 2002
Washington, Dec. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Farmer Brothers Co.
shareholders voted down a proposal that the coffee distributor
operate as in investment company, a move that would have
required Farmer Brothers to disclosure more details about its
portfolio.
Posted
Previously:
Farmer Bros. Co. is owned by a
father and son who together control more than 50% of the vote.
The father is the CEO and Chairman, Roy F. Farmer, and is 86
years old. He holds 43+% alone. The son, Roy E. Farmer, who is
50 and President/COO, holds another 2%. The ESOP holds another
6.6% - and the Farmers control that vote as well.
But the one major independent
shareholder, Franklin Mutual Advisors, which holds just under
10%, has this year put forth a shareholder proposal seeking
conversion of the company into a bona fide investment company
under the 1940 Act. This proposal, along with the usual notice
of the date and place of the company's annual meeting, may be
found in the company's recent proxy filing (see link below).
This is a firm that started out
as a food service specialist (mostly coffee products), but has
gradually turned into an investment company, with the food
service side increasingly neglected and essentially stagnant.
Given their majority status there's no chance at all that the
Farmer's might lose this year's vote, but in a stunning act of
bravado they've actually scheduled their annual meeting for
the day after Christmas, virtually assuring a dismal turnout
by any would-be dissidents.
But The Corporate Library, like
Santa, will be watching... |
