Free Republic

Now that Disney management has won its proxy battle with activist investor Nelson Peltz, let's take a look at the Big Lie the company told to help keep shareholders on management's side. Last month, the Mouse House released a detailed, 67-page report for investors "singing the praises of its chief executive Bob Iger in a bid to convince stockholders to side with him in a battle with activist investors," as Forbes' Caroline Reid put it. I included the link because Reid did in her write-up, but the PDF file is no longer there, perhaps flushed down the memory hole.Reid's article...

On Tuesday, Jeff Bezos was forced out as Amazon's CEO. (In corporate slang, he was "kicked upstairs.") Amazon's Board of Directors may have had enough of him furthering leftist causes at stockholders' expense. The decision to shut down Parler on his watch chased away some future customers from Amazon's web hosting services and caused some conservatives to stop buying from Amazon, although his successor is the executive who gave the actual order. More worrying to the financial community, it opened Amazon to lawsuits and government regulation. Morningstar.com, a financial website, reports:The leadership transition at Amazon will take place as it...

MENLO PARK, Calif./BOSTON (Reuters) – Protesters carrying an inflatable angry emoji plan to greet shareholders of Facebook Inc as they gather for the company’s annual meeting on Thursday, the latest sign of its struggle to shake off user privacy scandals and rein in fake news and hate speech. The social media giant will again face demands for reform at Thursday’s meeting, including shareholder proposals that call for revamping the company’s voting structure and ousting Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg as chairman. The measures have little chance of succeeding, as a dual class share structure gives Zuckerberg and other insiders control...

Berkshire Hathaway shareholders have overwhelmingly rejected a resolution calling for the company to write a report about the risks climate change creates for its insurance companies. CEO Warren Buffett says he agrees that dealing with climate change is important for society, but he doesn’t think climate change creates serious risks for Berkshire’s insurance businesses. Buffett says the fact that Berkshire generally writes insurance policies for one-year periods allows it to regularly re-evaluate risks, such as climate change. The activists who proposed the motion tried to urge Buffett to take a public stance in favor of measures to reduce consumption of...

Why does a flyspeck of a town in North Florida want voting rights to a potentially massive block of Publix Super Market's stock? Maybe it's tied to a recent campaign to oust the chain's directors at the upcoming annual meeting and take the company public. Or maybe the people of Campbellton, just south of the Alabama line in Jackson County, just want to lobby for a Publix in their town, population 351. It's tough to tell because none of the town officials are talking about their effort to seize voting rights in Publix stock by eminent domain, a move one...

(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) told CNSNews.com he does "not know that" President Barack Obama had the constitutional authority to tell BP to surrender its stockholders' money into an escrow account outside the company's control that would be used to pay damages to victims of the Gulf oil spill. Moreover, Nelson said the constitutional question was “not going to get answered” because BP agreed to Obama’s demand. In his Tuesday speech from the Oval Office, President Obama said, "Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are...

You didn't/don't hold the stock, did you? If so, I hope you sell tomorrow, assuming it opens over 2 cents/share. Seriously. No really, I'm not kidding. In a filing with the SEC late this afternoon it was disclosed that the GM "restructuring" would: Increase the number of authorized shares to 62 billion (!) Reduce the par value to one cent. Effect a 100:1 reverse split for the existing shareholders.

The latest liberal crusade is against the Wal-Mart stores. A big headline on a long article in The New York Times asks "Can't A Retail Behemoth Pay More?" Of course they can pay more. The New York Times could pay its own employees more. We could all pay more for whatever we buy or rent. Don't tell me you couldn't have paid a dime more for this newspaper. But why should any of us pay more than we have to? According to The New York Times, there is a book "by a group of scholars" due to be published this...

Otherwise eco-activists will keep the world’s poor impoverished, hungry, and disease-ridden. The litany of alleged offenses follows a script: fragile ecosystems, environmental devastation, irresponsible investment, huge profits, human rights violations, indigenous people imperiled. So do the demands: transparency, accountability, ethics, social responsibility. The tactics are equally familiar. Launch website, issue denunciations. Enlist grade school teachers whose students can write letters to the CEO. Harass the CEO at home. Stage protests at corporate offices. Claim to be stakeholders who must be given a role in all decisions, so that company policies henceforth reflect activist demands. Confrontational? Disingenuous? Of course. Effective? Absolutely....

California defense contractor warns employees following computer theft The Associated Press Feb 3 2005 3:16PM "Thieves stole several computers containing personal information on 45,000 current and former shareholders of defense contractor Science Applications International Corp., which began alerting those people on Thursday. SAIC is one of the nation's largest employee-owned companies. The computers stolen from an SAIC administrative building in San Diego contained the name, Social Security number, address and telephone number of current and former shareholders, including the number of shares bought, held and sold. The company said it had no evidence that the thieves accessed the information or...

THE CASE AGAINST CANADIAN DRUG RE-IMPORTATION by Timothy Rollins, Editor and Publisher October 21, 2004 The funny thing in all the hysteria of the campaign this year is that John Kerry, John Edwards and all their liberal idiot friends have been extolling the virtues of re-importing cheaper drugs from Canada (flag, right). Clearly, this is but another scare tactic designed to prey on perhaps one of America's most vulnerable elements of society - the elderly. People who prey on others are justifiably called predators. Yet "Botox Boy" - who wants be America's gigolo-in-chief - fails to realize this is a...

A galactic mystery hovers over the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland: How many of the 2,280 global leaders, including 31 heads of state, gathered in this Alpine resort conduct business with extraterrestrials? This is no whimsy for Davosians. It's on the agenda of the annual powwow of the influential and affluent who will ask forum participants such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Coca-Cola Chairman Douglas Daft and De La Rue Chief Executive Ian Much if the aliens have landed and are collaborating with them to concoct government policy, brew soda pop and mint Iraq's new bank notes. "The...

Paul Harvey, 84, is an ABC radio personality whose "News and Comment" program appears on 1,600 radio stations. His radio career goes back 60 years and he is known as "the most listened-to voice in the history of radio" and is "generally considered the greatest salesman in the history of radio." His recent run-in with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), militant Islam's most powerful institution in North American, provides a textbook example of Islamist aggression. The story begins on Dec. 4, 2003, when Harvey described the vicious nature of cock fighting in Iraq, then commented: "Add to the [Iraqi]...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.Pulling apart two of the world's top auto manufacturers half a decade after they've merged sounds like an impossible undertaking. But where there's a ruling, there might have to be a way. Delaware U.S. District Judge Joseph Faran certified a class-action lawsuit filed by DaimlerChrysler shareholders. Led by billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian, the shareholders claim Daimler-Benz misrepresented the merger of Chrysler as a "merger of equals" in 1998. Kerkorian's Tracinda is the automaker's third-largest holder with 2.3% of the shares. He also owns MGM Mirage. He is a member of Forbes' 400...

WorldCom Stockholders' Boycott Grows By Over 1,000 per Day June 06, 2003 1:50:00 PM ET CHICAGO, June 6 /PRNewswire/ -- A group of WorldCom stockholders has announced that over 4,500 customers of WorldCom/MCI Inc., (OTC Bulletin Board: WCOEQ, MCWEQ), intend to cancel their long distance or internet service if the company's current bankruptcy reorganization plan is approved. "There seems to be a groundswell of anger at big money's use of the bankruptcy process to take assets from individual stockholders," said Neal Nelson, Spokesperson for the WorldCom/MCI Stockholders Group, "We are receiving over 1,000 emails a day indicating that people intend...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 23 (Reuters) - General Electric Co. shareholders on Wednesday narrowly defeated a resolution at the company's annual meeting that was designed to curb executive "golden parachutes" amid lingering resentment over former Chairman Jack Welch's retirement package. The vote was one of the closest in GE history. No shareholder resolutions have passed in recent memory, GE spokesman Gary Sheffer said. All 13 shareholder resolutions - ranging on topics from global warming to pay disparity - were defeated at GE's annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. Nevertheless, investor discontent was evident...

  December 10 -- "Halliburton Shares Plunge on Verdict". The market clipped $3.8 billion off the giant oil field service company's share valuation after Peter Angelos got a $30 million jury award against it. The ruling is the fourth significant asbestos ruling against Halliburton since late October, according to Merrill Lynch ... Over the last 25 years, Halliburton has settled 194,000 asbestos claims, the company said. The average payment was about $200, according to Allen Brooks, executive director at CIBC World Markets. As of Sept. 30, the company faced 146,000 open asbestos claims and 182,000 more from a former...