It was big news when the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System announced they'd be voting against Bank of America Corp.'s (NYSE:BAC) board of directors in April. The pension funds joined
a chorus of large shareholders who'd already announced their intention to do the same. The proxy fight ultimately failed, but according to Colin Melvin, chief executive of Hermes Equity Ownership Services, had those investors engaged BofA's board earlier, it's possible they could have prevented the dire straits that prompted the proxy fight in the first place.
HEOS is the pension and institutional investor advisement arm of the U.K.-based financial management firm Hermes Group. There are myriad reasons, says Melvin, why big-block shareholders are often quiet investors, including few resources to fund meaningful engagement and the complacency that comes with long stretches of good times. In this edition of Inside The Deal, Melvin discusses these challenges and the emergence of a new and powerful shareholder, the federal government. See the video below or download it at
iTunes.
- Suzanne Stevens 
