Eliot Spitzer: Can Twitter Empower Shareholders?
New social media platforms could have an important impact on the future of shareholder democracy, former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer writes in his column on Slate:
For decades, shareholders have abandoned their responsibility to use their votes to shape corporate behavior. But perhaps technology can revive democracy on Wall Street. Could shareholders, gathered by an emergency twitter message, soon converge on a shareholder meeting to demand a claw-back for ill-gotten bonuses? Could proxy voting in 2011 generate the same enthusiasm as actual voting did in 2008?
Spitzer notes the emergence of various new web sites for shareholder advocates, including ProxyDemocracy, MoxyVote and Shareowners.org, and cites a couple of major reasons why the sites may not ultimately be able to give shareholders any greater voice in corporate governance.
Even so, bringing the technologies of the "new politics" to the corporate context will make information access easier and ultimately even permit direct shareholder-to-shareholder communication. In the long run, reinvigorating corporate democracy is almost as important as reinvigorating political democracy. Much as we may believe that a new regulatory regime will fix our corporate sector, the more important levers of influence will, and should, come from the activities of shareholders, aided by new technology.
You can read Spitzer's full column on Slate.
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Spitzer says there are at least two critical hurdles that still have to be overcome:
However, this year that is changing. With most of the Fortune 500 using majority vote requirements to elect directors and with “broker votes” no longer allowed when retail shareowners fail to vote within 10 days of the annual meeting, your vote counts more than ever. We are sure to see several directors turned out of office. That doesn’t stop them from replacing tweedle dee with tweedle dum, but its a good start.
That’s where sites like Shareowners.org and my own blog come in. People should be talking about how they are voting. It would be great to have TV shows like the Nightly Business Report actually providing analysis of the issues facing owners, rather than tips for the next bet. If PBS doesn’t do it, Spitzer could do it through Slate.com.
We also enjoyed Mr. Spitzer and Slate.com's great story! Moxy Vote also looks forward to the time when individuals are heard in the corporate boardroom.
One point of clarification: the article states that "Moxyvote.com, on the other hand, is a more overtly ideological site, providing its own list of shareholder advocates." It's worth noting that Moxy Vote is not providing our own recommendations or ideologies -- we provide a platform that allows others to do that work.
Moxy Vote will accept advocates of any political, religious or ideological persuasion, with the goal of putting passion into the somber act of proxy voting. We intend to increase retail participation in the proxy voting process, and we'd love to host debates among liberal advocates, conservative advocates, activist hedge funds, individual shareholders and the companies themselves.