Vikram Pandit

Shareholder 'Smart Bombs' Shaking Up Proxy Meetings

Shareholder meetings tend to be dull, pro forma affairs held at sterile conference centers and highlighted by an earnest chief executive who checks off a list of accomplishments for the past year and a list of goals for the year ahead.

Key items of business such as executive compensation and the re-election of the chairman and board of directors usually occur with hardly a whisper of opposition. Lone dissenters are taken in stride, a part of the annual proceedings, acknowledged politely and briefly by the smiling CEO.The curtain may be falling on these rote performances, however, as bolder and wiser shareholder activists use increasingly sophisticated techniques to target their opposition causes with pinpoint precision."I think we're seeing more proxy season smart bombs. That's the difference," said Ralph Ward, publisher of the Boardroom Insider and an expert on corporate governance.Shareholder activism has always played a role in steering the course of public companies, but the causes ...

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