“Apple Inc’s board relaxed some rules for director nominations by outside investors but stopped short of broader changes sought by an activist shareholder,” Ross Kerber and Stephen Nellis report for Reuters.
“The new bylaws disclosed in a securities filing late on Thursday dealt with the mechanics of ‘proxy access,’ the sometimes controversial process allowing outside investors to nominate their own candidates to a company’s board,” Kerber and Nellis report. “Apple, the world’s highest-valued publicly traded company, moved last year to allow a group of up to 20 shareholders owning at least 3 percent of its stock to include their own director candidates, constituting up to 20 percent of the board, in its proxy materials.”
“Thursday’s filing said shareholders also could re-nominate a director candidate regardless of the level of support he or she had won in earlier elections. Previously, shareholders were prohibited from re-nominating candidates who had gotten less than 25 percent at either of the company’s last two annual meetings.,” Kerber and Nellis report. “Independent shareholder James McRitchie, who has pressed Apple to grant more proxy access rights, said the changes were welcome, especially on the re-nomination question. But he said Apple failed to address two of his other, larger concerns… McRitchie, who owns about 600 shares of Apple, said he might be amenable to a compromise, but Apple has not spoken to him about one.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Some new blood on Apple’s BoD wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world.
What if you own 20 times that, can you get what you want too? 600 shares huh!
I guess I’ll do it.
Corporate Governance in the US is largely a joke. Apple is not much different and they have no intention of letting the rabble have to much sway.