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Forum Report
Defining Information Needs of
Decision-Makers
The previously reported plan
for defining Verizon valuation issues is being expanded to consider a much
broader range of marketplace interest than we’d expected, in the specific
subject as well as in our general process.
First, it became clear during the initial “Workshop” meeting in
July that both the importance and complexity of valuation issues raised by
professional securities analysts were greater than anticipated.
We therefore arranged with the New York
Society of Security Analysts (“NYSSA”) for more focused meetings and
discussions with some of the investment community’s leading telecom
specialists to develop recommendations of one or two key issues that would
have the most significance in valuations of Verizon. The next step will be
to present these recommendations for open Forum comment, and then we’ll
refine them for submission to some form of voting “validation process” by
NYSSA members and possibly other decision-making constituencies.
Once we’ve determined what valuation issues investors consider most
important, we should be able to proceed as originally planned to ask
Verizon’s management for the information you need to analyze the correlation
of executive compensation incentives to those key valuation issues.
Our general processes have also become a subject of broader
interest, beyond their specific application to Verizon issues. We expected
the Forum example of responding to the interests of Verizon’s investors to
be of use to investors in other companies, of course. But we’ve found, for
example, that the processes may also be of use to investor relations
professionals who are concerned with defining shareholder interests for
consideration by corporate management.
This has naturally stimulated wide ranging discussions to determine what may
be needed to fairly accommodate the interests of all the marketplace’s
decision-maker constituencies.
Under these circumstances, I assume you will understand the
delay in our original program. We now expect to be able to report revised
plans for the process to be followed by the Verizon Forum within a few
weeks. Your comments will be welcomed to help the program serve Verizon’s
management and investors, and to make it an effective pilot program for
others.
GL – 10/4/07
Gary Lutin
Lutin & Company
575 Madison Avenue, 10th Floor
New York, New York 10022
Tel: 212-605-0335
Email:
gl@shareholderforum.com
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