Forum Report

Adding Professional Focus Sections to SOP 2009 Clearinghouse

For those of you with professional responsibilities for this year’s testing of compensation advisory voting practices, the “Say on Pay 2009” clearinghouse web site* has been expanded to provide separate “Focus” sections for specific expertise or viewpoints you may find useful.  Each viewpoint section will be chaired by a recognized leader to guide the definition of relevant issues and respond to your questions or suggestions.

Focus sections are now listed, with links to their main pages, at the top of the right column on each page of the SOP 2009 web site.  We’ve started with these three:

§    Corporate secretaries – Chair: Douglas K. Chia, Senior Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary of Johnson & Johnson; member of the Shareholder Forum’s Program Panel for “Say on Pay.”

§    Board members – Chair: James Kristie, Editor and Associate Publisher, Directors & Boards.

§    Say on Pay advocates – Chair: Timothy Smith, Senior Vice President and Director of Socially Responsive Investment, Walden Asset Management; founding leader of the “Working Group” organized in 2007 to advocate “Say on Pay.”

You’ll see that these sections allow you to enter comments, and that you can do so anonymously if desired.  Please make use of this feature to let the chairperson know what interests you.

Please also tell me what other viewpoints you would find useful.  We plan to add several more of these Focus sections, and will appreciate your advice of both expertise and timing priorities.