CONTACT HOUSE CONFEREES ON WALL STREET REFORM BILL AND URGE THEM TO REJECT SENATE OFFER ON PROXY ACCESS

For those of you following the House-Senate conference on the Wall Street reform bill, you will know that both the House and Senate bills included provisions reaffirming the authority of the SEC to issue rules related to proxy access. The provisions were nearly identical and everyone expected the provision would be part of the final package. The Senate bill also included a majority voting provision, but the word for several weeks now was that that provision would come out of any final bill.

Yesterday, conferees began discussing the differences between the two bills on corporate governance issues. Shockingly, the Senate offer to the House proposed not only to drop the majority voting provsion, but also to add a 5% mininum ownership threshold and a two year holding period for shareholders to be able to nominate board candidates. Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY), sponsor of the proxy access provision in the bill, objected, but his Senate colleagues on the conference commitee voted to keep the restrictions in the offer to the House. (We understand that the Administration is among those pushing for the restrictions.)

The House conferees now will have to decide whether to accept the Senate offer of restricted proxy access. A number of organizations and individuals have weighed in to ask the House conferees to reject the Senate offer. Can you add your voice NOW to those who want to preserve meaningul proxy access? You can send a short note to House conferees asking them to reject the Senate offer on proxy access. Email is better than phone calls because staff generally are not at their desk. House conferees are:

Chairman Barney Frank (D, MA)

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D, PA)

Rep. Maxine Waters (D, CA)

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D, NY)

Rep. Mel Watt (D, NC)

Rep, Luis Guttierrez (D, IL)

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D, NY)

Rep. Gary Peters (D, MI)

Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D, OH)

Maureen Thompson