On Wednesday, 1/24, the corporate governance team consisting of DJ Jun, Rathika Nair and Michael Rocco O’Krepky presented their recommendations for how the fund should vote our $80K worth of Apple shares in the upcoming shareholder meeting. The motivation was that being responsible owners of our assets means participating in the governance of the companies we own.
At stake were all nine board seats including newly nominated Wanda Austin who will replace retiring Al Gore. In addition, there were five shareholder proposals and the annual advisory vote on executive compensation. The students had a healthy discussion of the five shareholder proposals requesting:
- a report on risks in Apple’s equal employer opportunity policy
- a report on curating app content
- data on gender and race pay gaps
- a report on Apple’s position on privacy and human rights
- a report on Apple’s use of AI
While some students sided with Apple’s claim that it already addresses these concerns, other students felt that drawing attention to equal opportunity, human rights and pay transparency were worthy causes to support. In a pretty tight vote, students voted “yes” on the first four proposals and “no” on the use of AI proposal.
The leader of the corporate governance team, DJ, presented a detailed comparison of Apple’s Tim Cook pay and that of Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. It was clear that both CEOs’ compensation packages are tied to the performance of the companies they lead. Yet, in the last three years Cook earned nearly double that of Nadella’s earnings. While some students argued that high pay is not needed to motivate Cook, others believed that the CEO deserves the $60 million dollar per year for leading one of the largest corporations in the world. In another tight vote, the students supported the proposed compensation.
Even though this year’s proxy for Apple did not contain particularly controversial proposals, discussing corporate governance felt useful. I think the members of the fund found it satisfying that their views will be represented. The corporate governance team will continue reviewing upcoming proxies: Amazon’s meeting is in May, and Alphabet’s in June.
by Tomas Dvorak