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An Insider’s Perspective: How to Avoid a Yahoo-Like Tabulation Nightmare

By broc

An Insider’s Perspective: How to Avoid a Yahoo-Like Tabulation Nightmare

As part of the Fall issue of InvestorRelationships.com, I got to spend some quality time with my good friend, the independent inspector Carl Hagberg to conduct an interview entitled, "An Insider’s Perspective: How to Avoid a Yahoo-Like Tabulation Nightmare." In the interview, we get access to Carl's many years of experience to better understand how the tabulation and inspection processes work. As borne out by the media attention to the voting result snafu at last month's Yahoo annual meeting, this could be wisdom that saves you from a needless crisis at your own shareholder meeting. In Yahoo's case, Carl explains how that snafu could have been easily avoided.

If you try a no-risk trial for InvestorRelationships.com for 2009, you get access to this Fall issue for free. Note that membership rates are very reasonable, starting at $295 for a single user through the end of '09. And membership gets you free admission to the upcoming InvestorRelationships.com webconference: "The SEC's New Corporate Website Guidance: Everything You Need to Know – And Do NOW."

If you already have received an ID/password for InvestorRelationships.com this year, you can renew your membership for 2009 now (and get free access to this webconference, etc. for another year).

Survey Results: Disclosure Committees

Back in mid-2004, we conducted a survey on disclosure committees (here are those older results) - we recently canvassed folks again on this topic and here are the results:

1. Our company:
- has a disclosure committee - 97.8%
- doesn't have a disclosure committee - 2.2%

2. Our disclosure committee has:
- more than 10 members - 37.2%
- between 8-9 members - 27.9%
- between 6-7 members - 27.9%
- between 4-5 members - 6.9%
- has less than 4 members - 0.0%

3. Our disclosure committee has the following types of members:
- CEO - 18.2%
- CFO - 70.5%
- Controller - 93.2%
- General Counsel - 75.0%
- Securities Counsel - 79.6%
- Compliance or Risk Management - 36.4%
- Investor Relations Officer - 77.3%
- Internal Auditor - 68.2%
- Officer from a Business Unit - 50.0%
- Other - 63.6%

Comparing the two surveys, it looks like the size of the disclosure committee has grown slightly (not surprising given the SEC's 2006 exec comp rule changes that likely brought in some new members) - and more internal auditors joining the committee and some CEOs dropping off...

Please take a moment to take this "Quick Survey on CEO Succession Planning."

- Broc Romanek

Full post as published by The Corporate Counsel.net Blog on September 10, 2008 (boomark / email).