Harvard Law School Proxy Access Roundtable

Abstract

This paper contains the proceedings of the Proxy Access Roundtable that was held by the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance on October 7, 2009. The Roundtable brought together prominent participants in the debate - representing a range of perspectives and experiences - for a day of discussion on the subject. The day’s first two sessions focused on the question of whether the Securities and Exchange Commission should provide an access regime, or whether it should leave the adoption of access arrangements, if any, to private ordering on a company-by-company basis. The third session focused on how a proxy access regime should be designed, assuming the Securities and Exchange Commission were to adopt such an access regime. The final session went beyond proxy access and focused on whether there are any further changes to the arrangements governing corporate elections that should be considered.

Speakers in the roundtable included Joseph Bachelder (The Bachelder Firm), Michal Barzuza (University of Virginia School of Law), Lucian Bebchuk (Harvard Law School), Robert Clark (Harvard Law School), John Coates (Harvard Law School), Isaac Corré (Eton Park Capital Management L.P.), Steven M. Davidoff (University of Connecticut School of Law), Jay Eisenhofer (Grant & Eisenhofer P.A.), Richard Ferlauto (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees [AFSCME]), Abe Friedman (Barclays Global Investors), Byron Georgiou (Of Counsel, Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP), Kayla Gillan (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission), Jeffrey Gordon (Columbia Law School), Edward Greene (Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP), Joseph Grundfest (Stanford Law School), Howell Jackson (Harvard Law School), Roy Katzovicz (Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P.), Stephen Lamb (Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP), Mark Lebovitch (Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP), Lance Lindblom (The Nathan Cummings Foundation), Simon Lorne (Millennium Management LLC), Robert Mendelsohn (formerly of Royal and Sun Alliance Insurance Group), Ted Mirvis (Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz), James Morphy (Sullivan & Cromwell LLP), Toby Myerson (Paul,Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP), Annette Nazareth (Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP), John F. Olson (Georgetown University Law Center), Mark Roe (Harvard Law School), Eric Roiter (Boston University School of Law), Leo Strine (Delaware Chancery Court), Daniel Summerfield (Universities Superannuation Scheme), Greg Taxin (formerly of Glass, Lewis & Co.) and John C. Wilcox (Sodali Ltd).