The Annual Report

Along with taxes and Spring, this is also the season for those dreaded annual reports for corporations in which we happen to own some stock.  They seem to arrive in bunches, and when a half a dozen are in the pile, I take my morning cup of coffee and work my way through them.

And every damn one of them makes me mad as hell.

I spend a few minutes looking at the corporate accomplishments and the concomitant back slapping that goes on and then move directly to the proxy statement where I study the corporate and board compensation.  That's where and when my early morning blood pressure readings jump up.  How can Marvin/Marvella R. Leader get by on the half million in salary and the seventeen million dollar annual bonus?  Similarly, how can  members of board who are employed at vast expense by other big companies manage on the quarter of a million they get in cash and stock options for attending board and committee meetings?

But my favorite part of the proxy statement is the resolutions submitted by the company and by a small cadre of angry and frustrated shareholders.  I have no problem enabling the board types to fly and eat first class for another term, but I have a special and growing sympathy for those who want board members to be elected every year, who yearn for an advisory vote to be taken on executive compensation, who believe that the chair of the board should be a non-executive of the enterprise, and similar ideas which will not be supported by the huge pension and investment funds who seem to own most of the stock.

The most recent trick is to persuade you that to save the environment, you should get your annual report and proxy statement online, and I say to hell with that!  

The only day of the year a company is "mine" is the day of the annual meeting, and the rest of the year it belongs to all its corporate leaders struggling check to check, dividend to dividend, and option to option.  I want that information printed and mailed to me so that I can write exclamatory comments in the margins and eventually use the report to start a fire in the fireplace next autumn, so I can make my big black x in the boxes next to the shareholder proposals that will never succeed but serve as the only way to send a message, however modest, to  management.

And while I'm at it, do you think corporations will ever issue a press release with quotes from the senior Poobah which sound as though they came from a living, breathing member of our species?  Here's a sample based on my experience:  "Acme Widget is pleased to welcome Hartley Farquhar as our new chief executive officer.  He is uniquely qualified by his training and experience, and his broad perspective will enable Acme to negotiate these troubled times successfully."

Wouldn't you love reading something like, "Acme Widget is amazed and delighted that it was able to snag Hartley Farquhar from its bitter rival to replace its hard-living former chief executive officer who wanted to spend more time with his family, but the treatment center to which he has been committed does not allow that for at least six weeks.  Maybe Hartley will get us back on an even keel so that we can achieve the earnings we should have had every year since 2004."

Just once I'd like to read something like that...just once.

Wouldn't you?