"Shareholder Spring" And The Growing Protest Movement May 14, 2012 By Joe Rothstein Editor, EINNEWS.com The first headline I saw when I stepped off the plane in London was Fat Cat Pay: Now The Backlash. That was the Daily Mail, a tabloid known for its big blackheadlines and sensational presentation of the news. But then I realized something bigger than a one-day story wasbrewing when I saw the sedate Financial Times. Its headline: Investor Anger Boils Over. Beneath the headline were photos of three CEOs who were dumpedafter investors rebelled against their pay packages.
Looking atthese photos was akin to seeing suspects in a criminal lineup. Thepresentation was quite remarkable, given that these three were bigdeal CEOs: leaders of Astra Zeneca, one of the world s largestpharmaceutical companies, Aviva, one of the world s largestinsurance companies, and Trinity Mirror, one of Great Britain slargest publishers. Revolts at Astra Zeneca, Aviva and Trinity Mirror were not isolatedincidents of investor anger boiling over. Days earlier, a third ofBarclay s shareholders voted against executive pay packages at ameeting so raucous, the bank's chairman had to ask shareholders tobehave in a 'responsible' and 'adult' manner.
And over at WilliamHill, the U.K. s legal gambling behemoth, 49.8 percent of theshareholders voted against proposed pay packages for executives,despite the fact that the company s stock has risen about 30percent this year. In London they re calling all of this the Shareholder Spring, and it s triggering protests far beyond the banks. The U.K.
has what s called a High Pay Commission, anofficially sanctioned independent body looking into the reasons forthe wide pay gap between top earners and worker bees. The chairmanof that commission reacted to the investor revolt by saying, Businesses just can t afford to look like they re living on adifferent planet from the rest of us. And that s really the heart of the matter. For so many companies,both in Great Britain and the U.S., it s business as usual.
JamieDimon, still CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase even after steering it intothe icebergs of 2008, has treated the bank s latest $2 billiongambling loss as a minor distraction. For many of the largestcompanies in the capitalist world, the meltdown has been just that,a minor distraction. But on a different planet, where the rest of us live, there areenduring consequences.
On the same day as the investor revolt hitthe newspapers, the Financial Services Authority, which monitorsthe British financial system, reported that the economic crisis hascost the average British household $48,000, and that the loss willnot be recovered until at least 2019. The British Centre for Economic and Business Research forecaststhat unemployment in the U.K., already much higher than in theU.S., will continue to rise until 2016, driven by the deepestgovernment spending squeeze since World War II. Writing in the Financial Times, Martin Taylor, a former Barclay schief executive observed Perhaps the most surprising thing aboutthe shareholder revolts on pay is that they took so long....Byfailing to handle a business problem at the proper time, the boardsof banks have managed to turn it into a wider social issue that isresonating well beyond the banking industry. Most humans are not hard-wired to revolt. In fact, history tells usthat people are willing to endure much before they rise up againstoppressive conditions.
It s now been about four years since thefull brunt of banking, mortgage and other failures of corporateculture have landed hard on the other 99 percent. The resulting consequences have devastated tens of millions ofpeople, brought down governments and compromised the future forindividuals, communities and even for the European Union itself.But the architects of this economic calamity, many of whom stillwork in the same executive suites, carry on as if the world has notchanged. And, indeed, for most of them, the world has notchanged---including their level of compensation and their attitudeof privilege. Compensation is the most egregious and most highly visible targetof public anger. It symbolizes the disconnect between those whomanage the world of business and those who pay the price for theirfailures.
What the Shareholder Spring seems to indicate is that even manymajor investors have had enough. They may not be ready to hit thestreets with occupy signs, but they are registering theirprotests in more targeted ways---right into the wallets and pursesof those who believe their corner offices and boardrooms to be onanother planet. This is occurring as those who do march and wield signs havereemerged at the Bank of England, St. Paul s Church and othervenues in London---and countless others are in full-throatedprotest worldwide.
U.K. voters lodged their own unmistakable protest days earlier whenthey blew away ruling Tory coalition candidates in local elections.The bleed the patient remedy for the ailing economy is makingthings worse nearly everywhere---in the U.K., France, Spain, Italy,Greece---and in the U.S. The street crowds are increasing. The protest votes cast by thosebeing bled dry are mounting. The question now is whether thecaptains of industry will notice and decide to share the planetwith the rest of us or whether they, and the politicians who vebeen coddling them, will need to be tossed to bring sanity andequity back to the economic system.
(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at joe@einnews.com). I am a professional writer from Timepieces, Jewelry, Eyewear, which contains a great deal of information about cheaters reading glasses , reading glasses diopter, welcome to visit!
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