I've mentioned the growing power of pensions funds several times recently on FW as a growing counterweight to CEOs in large corporations. Here is a quote from a correspondent of the Financial Times attending the annual conference of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) in Milan -- a very powerful body whose members control $10,000 billion of assets.
(It might also be mentioned that Boeing, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Citibank are four US coporations which are also calling for much more radical action than Bush is presently proposing.) Back to the ICGN conference: <<<< US INVESTORS BLAST BUSH REFORM by Simon Targett Pension fund giants TIAA-CREF and Calpers demand more radical action President George W. Bush has not gone far enough in his bid to rid corporate America of corruption, according to some of the country's more powerful investors. Calpers, the largest US pension fund, and TIAA-CREF, the giant New York-based fund, are to uyrge Mr Bush to take more radical action to prevent a repeat of the scandals surrounding Enron and WorldCom. Calpers are also planning to take greater political and legal measures to defend the retirement funds it invests on behalf of 1.3 million Californians. In a speech to Wall Street last week, Mr Bush unveiled a crackdown on the corporate crisis in the US. He plans to double the maximum jail sentence for corrupt chief executives to ten years; strengthen the policing of Wall Street with a new fraud task force; and increase funding of the Securities and Exchange committee (SEC), the US financial watchdog, by $100 million. But, in an interview with the FT, Willian Crist, president of Calpers' board, said: "Mr Bush misses the point. It's not just criminal activity . . . it's the fact that these companies are run by insiders for their own advantage." John Biggs, chief executive of TIAA-CREF and a director of Boeing, the US aircraft manufacturer, said: "I'm encouraged that the President is talking tough and taking coporate governance into every room with a TV in the country. But I think that the specifics of the Repbuvlican propsals do not amount to reform." Calpers, which manages $150 billiobn of assets for California's public employees, is to prss for legislative changes that would boost the influence of shareholders in the boardroom. Among other measures, it would like to see all shareholder resolutions made binding on the company and great investor access be made available to the director ballotting process. Calpers and TIAA-CREF are also demanding stronger regulatory oversight of business wrongdoing. Mr Crist said Mr Bush did not go far enough in his plans to increase SEC's funding. "We pay chief executives way too much and [regulators] too little," he said. "We want to give the SEC three times what President Bush is suggesting." Mr Crist added that Enron and WorldCom would have a substantial impact on the way Calpers conducted its affairs. "I think we'll get more invoklved in politics, and we'll get more involved in litigation. We'll be quick to exercise our legal claims to recover our assets." >>>> Keith Hudson ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
