More than a year ago, we noted that a new blog, authored by a plaintiff side law firm had appeared. As quickly as it was noticed, it was gone.
Well, we are happy to say that another plaintiff side law firm has decided to start a securities litigation focused blog.
PomTalk, "The Blog for Institutional Investors," is a collaborative effort put out by Pomerantz Haudek Block Grossman & Gross, a/k/a "The Pomerantz Law Firm."
Welcome to the blogosphere, PomTalk. Try and stick around...
Welcome to the new home (and address) of Securities Litigation Watch.
We have been integrated into the newly rebranded RiskMetrics Group.
Please drop us a line if you experience any difficulties with the RSS feeds, subscriptions, or anything else.
Dear Reader:
Sorry for the radio silence. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, life has a funny way of keeping you busiest when you have the least time for it. But now that our cloning project has been successful, regular posting by Adam #3 will begin again.
Thanks for hanging in there.
Adam
This article is the first in a two-part look at environmental and social issue proposals filed by shareholders for the 2007 proxy season. This preview focuses on environmental issues, while next week's article will address political contributions and other social issues.
Shareholders concerned with how U.S. companies manage environmental and social issues have already filed more than 340 proposals this season. The number of resolutions point to a busy proxy year that could beat the all-time high of 367 resolutions offered in 2006.
As a barometer of the times, one out of every 10 of these proposals deals with how companies should best respond to challenges posed by global warming. Climate change-related proposals, along with proposals on reducing the use of toxic chemicals or seeking action on other environmental issues, account for more than 70 of the proposals filed for this year's meetings. In addition, 39 proposals have been filed so far asking companies to issue sustainability reports, nearly double the 20 submitted last year.
Climate change continues to be a major concern of proponents of environmental resolutions, as evidenced by the submission of 45 proposals focused directly on greenhouse emissions or indirectly on renewable energy.
Proponents have submitted a new proposal to Chevron, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor, General Motors, and TXU asking the companies to adopt quantitative goals for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Other shareholders have filed four more climate change proposals at ExxonMobil, all of which are awaiting decisions on the company's no-action challenges at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). ExxonMobil acknowledges the need to improve energy efficiency and decrease emissions but argues the pursuit of specific projects--such as establishing quantitative goals--is not something that shareholders should decide at the annual meeting.
New York City's pension funds withdrew the quantitative goals proposal at TXU. Still, two other greenhouse emission proposals are pending at the company, according to the proponents, but none may come to votes if a proposed $44 billion buyout goes through. Two private buyout firms seeking to acquire TXU have told environmental groups that they would scale back the utility company's plans to build 11 new coal-fired plants to three such plants.
Calvert Asset Management filed resolutions at Bemis, Hartford Financial, Prudential, and Teradyne asking for company reports on the effects of climate change on their operations. The investment firm reports that it withdrew all four proposals after reaching agreements with the companies. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees said it withdrew a similar resolution at another insurance company, Chubb, in return for a promise of future discussions before the SEC agreed to the company's no-action request. Insurance companies have always been able to get SEC permission to omit greenhouse-emissions-related shareholder resolutions by arguing that assessing greenhouse risks is an ordinary business issue for that industry.
In addition, the Service Employees International Union has filed a new resolution with Wells Fargo asking for emissions reduction goals for the company's own operations and the activities of its corporate borrowers, advisory, and project finance clients. A new church-sponsored resolution at Starwood Hotel & Resorts Worldwide asks for a report on the feasibility of developing policies that will minimize the company's impacts on climate change.
On the related issue of renewables, Trillium Asset Management reports it has filed a proposal at ConocoPhillips that seeks a report on how the company will respond to rising pressure to develop renewable energy sources. The Nathan Cummings Foundation is continuing to file this proposal with property development companies and retailers. The foundation re-filed at Standard Pacific, where the resolution got 39.3 percent support in 2006, a record for proposals related to climate change.
This year, Standard challenged the resolution successfully at the SEC, pointing to a June 2005 staff bulletin that sanctioned the omission of environmental and health resolutions if they would entail an evaluation of business risk (the supporting statement asserted that ignoring the issue of renewables could expose the company as an industry laggard and open it to competitive and industry risk). Pulte Homes was allowed to omit the proposal for the same reason.
Nevertheless, renewable energy proposals are being looked at by other companies. The issue has already been voted on at Whole Foods for a second year, and a mix of proponents have filed it for the first time at Boston Properties and CVS. The resolution has been withdrawn after agreements at D.R. Horton and Toll Brothers, proponents say.
A handful of the resolutions filed this year on climate issues come from individuals and organizations that question the scientific consensus on climate change. Carl Olson has re-filed resolutions with Ford and Occidental Petroleum asking for a detailed scientific report on how the companies measure "global warming/cooling." The SEC staff had allowed companies to omit the resolution in 2004 and 2005, but did an about-face, without explanation, last year.
Climate change skeptic Action Fund Management is re-filing a resolution to General Electric asking for a report on, among other things, whether climate-related change is necessarily undesirable and whether a cost-effective strategy for mitigating any undesirable change is practical. That proposal survived a challenge at the SEC, but a second Action Fund proposal was omitted at Hewlett-Packard. The resolved clause was similar, but the supporting statement raised the question of business risk by asserting that the company risked being sued in California for reporting its greenhouse emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project.
Welcome to the new, freshly updated Securities Litigation Watch.
I am your new host, Adam Savett, and I'm the Vice President, Product & Market Segment Manager for Securities
Class Action Services at ISS.
A number of you may have read my musings on securities litigation at my old blog, Lies, Damn Lies, & Forward Looking Statements.
For those that are not readers of my old blog, or former colleagues, I'll take a brief moment to introduce myself.
I am a recovering attorney, having spent the past six years as a practicing securities litigator at firms in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. During that time I represented and advised institutional investors, including public and private pension funds as well as Taft-Hartley plans, in all aspects of securities litigation, and had primary day-to-day responsibility for my firm's institutional investor portfolio monitoring programs.
Now I manage the suite of Securities Class Action Services products for ISS. These products make ISS the only firm that delivers a complete, outsourced class-action service to specifically help institutional investors meet their fiduciary responsibilities.
The purpose of this blog is to both educate and entertain as we discuss the wild and sometimes wacky world of securities litigation. Readers are strongly encouraged to send in story ideas or tips or even guest posts if a topic is near and dear to your heart.
And so, without further adieu, let the blogging begin...
Nathan Carlile of the Legal Times has this lengthy and occasionally quite funny profile of David Lat, who writes the Above the Law blog we previously discussed here.
Reflecting upon Lat's highly unusual journey that has led to him to a career as a legal blogger, the article concludes by comforting us that
if this doesn't last – and if, eventually, Lat's story becomes just the familiar cautionary tale about a federal prosecutor who poses as a woman to post gossip on the Internet only to be exposed by a New Yorker writer and sign a lucrative blogging deal – he says things will still be OK.
Looking for a way to spend some of that spare non-billable time while still staying firmly on topic? Check out Dealbreaker.com and AbovetheLaw.com, two relatively new sister blogs that cover the "gossip"/cocktail party discussion-side of Wall Street and law, respectively. We're just getting to know Above the Law, but Dealbreaker is already firmly on our good side due to its blanket coverage of SLW-favorites David Pajcin and Eugene Plotkin.
Securities Litigation Watch entered the blogosphere 3 years ago today, with this rookie-caliber post about an SEC subpoena enforcement action against RJ Reynolds. These first 3 years of SLW-ing have been fun, educational, and rewarding in many ways, and I appreciate the many readers who have offered feedback and encouragement along the way.
Thanks!
Bruce Carton
Xethanol Corp., the first "skeweree" of the Mark Cuban-backed Sharesleuth.com, appears to have begun tanking today following the negative investigative piece posted yesterday by Sharesleuth.com. The stock was down over 13% on far greater-than-normal volume.
Will the Sharesleuth.com money machine actually work? Stay tuned!
| XETHANOL CORPORATION (AMEX:XNL) Delayed quote data |
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As previewed here, the Mark Cuban-backed Sharesleuth.com issued its first investigative piece today, absolutely skewering a company called Xethanol Corp. You may recall the Sharesleuth.com concept discussed in the earlier post: Cuban backs the Sharesleuth.com investigations/journalism, and tells the world right up front that he is going to be trading and/or shorting the stocks discussed in the Sharesleuth.com articles in advance of the articles' publication. Indeed, today's article discloses that Cuban has already shorted 10,000 shares of Xethanol Corp.
So everything seems to be clicking along according to plan for Cuban and Sharesleuth.com (find a company to skewer--check; write the article--check; short the stock pre-publication--check; publish the article--check) except for one thing: despite the publication of the negative article at 10:05 am, the stock price has remained virtually unchanged (it closed at $6.95/share on Friday according to the article and closed today just 4 cents lower at$6.91/share, on below average volume).
What's the problem here with this sure-fire money machine? Why isn't the stock going down? Does the market not find the Sharesleuth.com analysis persuasive? Is nobody reading Sharesleuth.com yet?
Come on, people! Don't you realize that journalism paid for by short-sale profits can't sustain itself if the stock doesn't go down post-publication?
0.96 (13.89%)