Take Action

Get Informed

The internet is empowering individual investors as never before. Now you can learn what resolutions concern the companies you own, how mutual funds are voting your shares, how you can communicate with corporations, and how you can take action.

One person can make a difference. Look at what Eric Jackson and 100 other small investors did with Yahoo.

Here is a partial list of sites you will find helpful:

FundVotes: Learn how your mutual funds are voting

CorpGov.net: May be the deepest well of shareholder information on the Internet

Investor Suffrage Movement: Join a team of volunteer field agents who participate in annual meetings

ProxyDemocracy.org: Learn how mutual funds voted your shares, and see the resolutions involving specific companies

Shareowners.org: News about specific reform measures

TransparentDemocracy.org: Get actual ballots about corporate and political issues, and learn how others suggest you vote

VoterMedia.org: Learn about corporate and political voting issues, and media that educate us about them

Vote!

It's easier than ever to vote your shares, and thanks to changes by the SEC, your votes mean more than ever.

Until 2010, your stockbrokerage could vote your shares any way it wanted, unless you gave instructions otherwise. Many of these relationships were fraught with conflicts of interest. Shareholders' interests were often ignored.

Starting now, brokers can no longer vote "uninstructed shares."

When these drop out of the mix, the surviving votes mean even more.

You have a few choices:

1. Return the proxies that arrive in your  mail.
2. Tell your broker how you want your shares voted.
3. Vote online.

A new service called moxyvote.com is now up and running. It enables you to cast votes for shares you own, as it informs you about how third parties assess the election.

In its first month, MoxyVote has aggregated more than 11.5 percent of the shares in On2 Technologies, which Google is attempting to buy. Some shareholders believe the board agreed to too low a price.  The 20 million shares voted through MoxyVote are a huge bloc, particularly for a fledgling website.

A number of brokerages like Merrill Lynch and Foliofn permit you to vote online at their own sites. Others refer you to broadridge.com, the dominant firm in corporate vote-counting.

No matter what you do, your vote now means more than ever. Opponents of reform depend on your apathy. Disappoint them!

Write to Congress

We're now in a unique window of opportunity. The nation has suffered enough financial damage that Congress is contemplating a number of serious measures to improve the way companies issues.

Here are the major pieces of pertinent legislation in the Congressional pipeline:

• Investor Bill of Rights Act of 2009: ("The Schumer Bill") "...to provide shareholders with enhanced authority over the nomination, election, and compensation of public company executives."
• Shareholder Empowerment Act of 2009: ("The House Version") "...to provide for rules and standards relating to the election of boards of directors and certain requirements relating to compensation of executives."
• Investor Protection Act of 2009: "...to provide the Securities and Exchange Commission with additional authorities to protect investors from violations of the securities laws...."
• Corporate and Institution Compensation Fairness Act of 2009: (Rep. Barney Frank's "Say on Pay") "...to provide shareholders with an advisory vote on executive compensation and to prevent perverse incentives in the compensation practices of financial institutions."
  
• Corporate Governance Reform Act of 2009: "...to add requirements for board of directors committees regarding risk management and compensation policies, to require non-binding shareholder votes on executive compensation...."
• Excessive Pay Shareholder Approval Act: "...to require a supermajority shareholder vote to approve excessive compensation of any employee of a publicly-traded company."
• Restoring Financial Stability Act of 2009: (Senator Dodd's bill) "...to [establish] the Agency for Financial Stability, to ensure the orderly resolution of failing complex financial institutions, ...to provide for effective bank supervision through the establishment of the Financial Institutions Regulatory Administration, to [establish] the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, to allow the Federal government to better coordinate and monitor insurance matters...to improve the regulation of derivatives,securities, securities products, credit rating agencies, and hedge funds, to increase investor protections...."

To send letters via the internet, you are restricted to the representative from your district, but you can write to any senator.

You can find Senate mailing tools here.

You can find House mailing tools here.

Write the SEC

Seriously. They seem to be back from the dead.

The SEC has a sparkling new Investor Advisory Council (SECIAC). It has nothing to do with the enforcement that was so lacking in recent years, but it is charged with "advising the Commission on matters of concern to investors in the securities markets; providing the Commission with investors' perspectives on current, non-enforcement, regulatory issues; and serving as a source of information and recommendations to the Commission regarding the Commission's regulatory programs from the point of view of investors."

Visit the blog of Mark Latham, one of the members of the SECIAC, to experience the enthusiasm this group brings to the mission. He's representative of a small core of activists who passionately care about the way companies are run and want to improve the system.