Institutional Shareholder Services said it supports a split and recommended against voting for three directors.
Institutional Shareholder Services, with plenty of throw weight to move big investors, initially backed Esmark.
And they did--by a landslide--despite a recommendation by Institutional Shareholder Services to approve the deal.
Institutional Shareholder Services had opposed the re-election of Lane, as well as McKesson CEO John Hammergren and Thompson.
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Institutional Shareholder Services, another influential advisory firm, also recommended such a split recently.
Veteran management and a large institutional shareholder base are additional plusses to assist the stock price and dividend going forward.
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Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), an influential organisation that advises big investors, late last year issued guidelines urging clients to be more assertive.
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Patrick McGurn, executive vice president of Institutional Shareholder Services in Rockville, Md.
Another powerful influence is Institutional Shareholder Services, a corporate governance group.
Critics -- including Woodford and Institutional Shareholder Services -- opposed the "insider" appointments, questioning Kimoto's ties to Sumitomo, the company's biggest lender.
Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises large investors how to vote in corporate elections, recommends a "no" vote for an average of 13% of say-on-pay votes a year.
Institutional Shareholder Services also is recommending HP shareholders vote against the re-election of Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist best known as the co-founder of Web browser pioneer Netscape Communications.
At 12 companies in the Russell 3000 stock index, a majority of voting investors have recommended against pay plans this year, according to Institutional Shareholder Services, a proxy advisory firm.
Elliott was seconded earlier this month by the influential firm Institutional Shareholder Services, which backed its efforts publicly and recommended that shareholders support Elliott's slate of five nominees for the board.
Institutional Shareholder Services, a firm which advises institutions on how to vote, added its support to Messrs Disney and Gold this week by advising investors not to vote for Mr Eisner's re-election.
Influential investment advisers, such as Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), have started advising clients to vote against members of compensation committees or against compensation plans that exceed certain competitive benchmarks or don't have close enough ties to performance.
Such a view is not surprising, given her background: she has worked since 1986 with Bob Monks, one of America's best-known champions of better corporate governance, setting up Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises big institutions on casting proxy votes.
So far in 1999, says Pat McGurn of Institutional Shareholder Services, which provides institutional investors with proxy analysis, disaffected shareholders have already won a vote in six contests to put their candidates on corporate boards but reached a favourable settlement in 25 more.
"We believe in one share, one vote, and if all we get back are bromides about the need to preserve journalistic integrity, we think the burden is on the company to prove its model maximizes shareholder value, " says Christopher Young, of proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services.
Far from helping companies to weather the crisis, powerful institutional shareholders and independent directors did worse in terms of shareholder value.
The authors argue that in the run-up to the crisis powerful institutional owners pushed firms to take more risks to boost shareholder returns.
Increasingly, the five judges of Delaware's Court of Chancery, which traces its roots back to medieval England, have been putting their faith in the sophistication of institutional investors, the importance of independent directors and the shareholder vote.
Rather than simply assuming that executives will work to maximize shareholder value, it pays for boards to implement institutional measures to help encourage this outcome.
How does shareholder activism play into this thinking, specifically those of large institutional investors?
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Getco says its proposal will leave no individual shareholder with more than a 20% stake and no major institutional holder with more than 10%.
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Fidelity Management, which leads a list of reputable institutional investors that has accumulated shares in ZIOPHARM, is now the largest shareholder with a 13.75% stake.
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In the US, while quotas are not being considered to resolve this problem, some institutional investors are pushing for a market-based solution through engagement and shareholder proposals seeking greater gender and ethnic diversity on boards.
Even when institutional investors like pension funds try to work within the system, using their significant, long-term shareholder standing to exert influence on corporate boards, they have been turned back.
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Because stock ownership, even by large institutional investors, is so widely dispersed, the potential return an investor can get by being an activist shareholder is too low to justify spending his or her time and money on efforts to hold down unnecessary pay and spending.
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