They could also simply sell their shares and invest in a better company.
Shareholders have other options besides putting a proposal on the ballot. Shareholder information rights generally allow a shareholder to access business records of a company provided that she has a legitimate business purpose - but that is usually only defined as a purpose related the shareholder wealth maximization (for further reading, look into a 1974 Minnesota case Pillsbury v. Honeywell, Inc. in which the plaintiff wanted to get information for the purpose of ending Honeywellâs production of napalm during the Vietnam War). While courts and legislatures have been getting better at understanding the social responsibility that corporations have, the trend is relatively new. Remember, for decades American business has been under the spell of Milton Friedmanâs mantra that the role of the corporation is to maximize shareholder wealth.
I am surprised that AT&T has not taken the matter to the SEC for review. The typical procedure for a corporation trying to exclude these things is to get a No Action Letter from the SEC in which the govât agency basically says âWe agree that you donât have to publish the proposal and we wonât find you in violation of SEC regulations if you do.â If that were to happen, then that may be the end of the story for the shareholder proposal. If the DiNapoli wants to continue to push the issue, then there may have to be (a very expensive) proxy contest for board control of AT&T in order to change to companyâs bylaws to require transparency reports.
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Well, thatâs fine, but whether or not and to what extent AT&T has been handing information on its customers to people without disclosing that fact is definitely going to impact shareholder wealth if it affects their ability to acquire foreign companies. Even if we accept that thatâs the only time information can be requested, surely itâs relevant?
tired of golden parachutists selling you out to secret courts? wait, we here at at&t know nothing about that.
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