Episode Details

SEC Announces It Will Not Respond to Most No-Action Requests for Rule 14a-8 Shareholder Proposals.

Government shutdown - the staff claimed they COULDN’T respond because after the shutdown, they had too much other work to do: “current resource and timing considerations following the lengthy government shutdown and the large volume of registration statements and other filings requiring prompt staff attention.”  It just happens to coincide with Atkins saying there shouldn’t be shareholder proposals, that’s just a coincidence.

John Cheveddan and Jim McRitchie - let’s be honest, if it weren’t for Cheveddan and McRitchie over 3 decades, we’d have less shareholder rights, and companies would not be such big whiners about “woke” shareholder proposals.  Guys, you ruined it for all of us with your attention to democracy.

Woke ESG shareholders like As You Sow, Arjuna, Trillium, and nuns - if we’re honest, the nuns and SRI crowd might have been the straw, right?  I mean they’re putting in proposals that MAKE Exxon sue them!  How dare they ask for carbon scope 3 emissions data!

Antiwoke shareholders like NCPPR and Jesus - excluding Cheveddan/McRitchie, the highest volume of shareholder proposals have actually been the ANTI-woke filers, asking for things like a report on how companies will stop funding trans conversions (or one actual one where they asked about the reputational risk of NOT supporting un-trans-ing).  Some of the proposals are so comically stupid, but the companies have to respond using third party lawyers and do the whole thing - maybe National Legal whatever center for whatever is the REAL straw?

ISS and Glass Lewis - this was like 90% of what they did, since they certainly didn’t suggest voting against any directors unless an activist was involved.  So when Ramaswamy and Musk and DeSantis and Texas declared proxy advisors woke activists, it was hard to deny since they didn’t do any work to vote out directors - just offer customers whatever voting pablum they wanted

BlackRock and investors who never voted anyway

Other - Atkins and Manhattan institute - lobbyists, administration

Pepsi to cut product offering nearly 20% in deal with $4 billion activist Elliott

PepsiCo said it also plans to accelerate the introduction of new offerings with simpler and more functional ingredients, including Doritos Protein and Simply NKD Cheetos and Doritos, which contain no artificial flavors or colors. The company also recently introduced a prebiotic version of its signature cola..

WHO DO YOU BLAME?

Pepsi CEO Ramon Laguarta - CEO since 2018, 21% influence, 43% connected to the board (so they’re basically all known entities), has overseen basicall