Thursday, April 15, 2010

Gannett's board bows to shareholder tax demand

Compensation committee cries uncle: left to right, from top, members Arthur Harper, Marjorie Magner, Duncan McFarland and Karen Hastie Williams.

From a new report by trade journal Editor & Publisher:

Facing a shareholder proposal on so-called excise tax gross-ups -- in which a company pays part of the tax on a top executive's golden parachute -- Gannett's board of directors has eliminated the perk for future executives, according to a new regulatory filing late today. That represents a big turnaround for the board, which in proxy materials for the May 4 annual meeting recommended unanimously against changing its gross-up policy.

At last year's annual meeting, a proposal to eliminate gross-ups in change-of-control situations won an unusually large 48% of shares. The Amalgamated Bank LongView Large Cap 500 Index Fund came back with the proposal again for the annual meeting scheduled next month. Following the board's compensation committee move, the fund says it won't press its proposal, the filing says.

2 comments:

  1. Didn't Karen Hastie Williams have a cameo in the movie The Mummy?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wonder how the rest of the proxy votes went - if anyone followed the board's recommendations at all.....

    ReplyDelete

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