ISS Rules in Favor of Blue Card; White Presses for a Vote

tpltblogger4 Comments

“… a public track record that seems to reflect direct efforts to improve the governance of the companies on whose boards he has served. Cook brings substantial experience as a public company board member, as well as chairman of the San Antonio chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors. In fact, he appears to have played an integral part in the effort to de-classify the board of Crane [Co]. At Crane’s first annual meeting after Cook became the chairman of the Nominating and Governance Committee, the company granted shareholders a vote on whether to de-classify its board, which shareholders approved. Cook’s track record appears to reflect a willingness and ability to push for corporate governance changes that benefit shareholders.”

Looks like their conviction was off the charts with all the “seems” and “appears” in there.

White had a tough day but doubles down on its call for a vote.

“We continue to regret the depths to which the TPL incumbent Trustees and management have sunk in order to try to tarnish the business reputation of their largest shareholders, while spending millions of dollars in shareholder money to preserve their lifetime jobs.

“Once again, we call on the incumbent Trustees to immediately commit today to bring this matter to a shareholder vote on May 22, 2019, as currently scheduled. We have now repeatedly asked for this simple public commitment from the trustees given our increasing concern that they are considering delaying the vote if they believe Eric Oliver will otherwise be elected trustee. The incumbent Trustees’ continuing silence on this matter is very alarming to us and should be to all shareholders.”

Getting too late to postpone in my opinion.  We’ll be two weeks out in about four hours.  Postponement now, in my opinion, would be a big GFY to all of the ‘non-card’ individual and institutional investors that have carved out midweek time to fly in and attend.  Blue probably just making White sweat here by not publicly re-committing to the set date as there is limited upside for them to do so.

4 thoughts on “ISS Rules in Favor of Blue Card; White Presses for a Vote”

  3. Although disappointing, I don’t think this is a big deal. 62% of TPL owners are retail investors. Its not in any meaningful number of ETF’s. Other than HK, big name holders like Blackrock and Vanguard, (who are likely to take an ISS recommendation on the vote) have no ownership at all that I can see.

    ISS likes to play it safe, but their ability to influence a quirky nonindexed stock like TPL is marginal at best….and at worst, some owners like me would take their recommendation as a good reason to take the other side here. Already voted White, but tif undecided this would have tipped the balance to White for me.

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  4. does not say much for ISS in my opinion….they’ve done this before-gone with really poor management
    against competency….increasingly unimpressed with ISS….they recommended status quo on another deal where management took millions out of a company, stock went down significantly over their tenure….we issued a list of more than 18 items needing to be addressed by Board which fought us…ISS went with them…they barely won, but adopted every item we came up with….makes you wonder…did speak with two owners here at SALT tonight…they’re in for WHITE proxy now
    WHITE proxy only!

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