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Plans for Open Forum Meeting on July 13, 2010

Arrangements have been made for the Shareholder Forum’s open meeting of its public interest program for “Electronic Participation in Shareholder Meetings” to be hosted by the New York Society of Security Analysts (“NYSSA”) in mid-town New York City on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 13, 2010. You will be able to participate either in person or by video conferencing, in a demonstration of the kind of electronic communication being addressed by the program.

As indicated in the program’s Forum Summary, the purpose of the open meeting is to exchange views on proposed standards for the fair and orderly conduct of shareholder meetings that allow electronic participation. Your advice of issues to be considered, and of perspectives that should be represented by either panel members or invited experts, will be appreciated during the next week to guide our preparation of an agenda.

To stimulate your thinking about the objectives of shareholder meetings as well as other investor communications, I encourage you to read a letter and an article that have been posted on the Forum web site. The letter is from the CEO of Best Buy, a company in the business of retailing electronic communications products (and also a company planning one of the meetings we’ll be observing), presenting a compelling view of the opportunities presented by a “Connected World” that “enables people to do what they want to do on their terms,” and that “has become a non-negotiable for millions of people today, and will be for millions more in the years ahead.”

·  May 11, 2010, Best Buy Co., Inc., SEC Form DEFA14A: Letter to shareholders (1 page, 37 KB, in PDF format)

The article is the cover feature of Directors & Boards that will be reaching readers soon (made available to Forum participants by the editor and Forum panel member, Jim Kristie), presenting the views of 18 directors and advisers on best practices for board communications with investors.

·  Second Quarter 2010, Directors & Boards: "Who speaks for the board?" (12 pages, 465 KB, in PDF format)

Please let me know what you consider important, so that we can address it.

GL – May 12, 2010

 

Gary Lutin

Chairman, The Shareholder Forum

c/o Lutin & Company

575 Madison Avenue, 10th Floor

New York, New York 10022

Tel: 212-605-0335

Email: gl@shareholderforum.com

 

 

 

This Forum program is open, free of charge, to anyone concerned with investor interests in the development of standards for conducting shareholder meetings with electronic participation. As stated in the posted Conditions of Participation, the Forum's purpose is to provide decision-makers with access to information and a free exchange of views on the issues presented in the program's Forum Summary. Each participant is expected to make independent use of information obtained through the Forum, subject to the privacy rights of other participants.  It is a Forum rule that participants will not be identified or quoted without their explicit permission.

The organization of this Forum program was encouraged by Walden Asset Management, and is proceeding with the invited leadership support of Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. and Intel Corporation to address issues relevant to broad public interests in marketplace practices, rather than investor decisions relating to only a single company. The Forum may therefore invite program support of several companies that can provide both expertise and examples of leadership relating to the issues being addressed.

Inquiries about this Forum program and requests to be included in its distribution list may be addressed to e-mtg@shareholderforum.com.

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 has since been offering with the “Shareholder Forum” name, and we have asked Broadridge to use a different name that does not suggest our support or endorsement.