WP: Union Ranks Funds by Executive-Pay Votes

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501862_pf.html

Union Ranks Funds by Executive-Pay Votes

By Oliver Ludwig
Bloomberg News
Wednesday, June 6, 2007; D02

AllianceBernstein Holding and Barclays Global Investors backed pay proposals of executives at companies in which they invest more frequently than other mutual fund firms last year, according to a union study.

AllianceBernstein supported management 94.8 percent of the time on compensation plans, and Barclays 94.7 percent, according to the study released yesterday by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the largest union of public-service workers.

Mutual fund managers vote on issues such as governance, mergers and salaries at thousands of companies on behalf of institutional and individual investors while managing a total of $11 trillion in assets. Nine of 10 institutions are concerned that corporate executives are overpaid, the union said, citing a 2005 study by consultant Watson Wyatt Worldwide in Arlington.

"It concerns us when well-known mutual funds abdicate their role as watchdogs for their clients' money," Gerald W. McEntee, president of the union, said in a statement. "This report shines a bright light on those mutual funds that are complicit in excessive payouts to CEOs."

The average support for management-backed pay plans was 75.8 percent in 2006, compared with 75.6 a year earlier, said the study, which reviewed 29 of the largest fund managers in the year ended June 30, 2006.

Officials at New York-based AllianceBernstein were not immediately available to respond. Lance Berg, a spokesman for Barclays Global in San Francisco, declined to comment. The company is a unit of London-based Barclays.

FULL story at link.

[Warpy]

1. One of my proxy votes on inherited stocks

was a brazen little item that absolved the company board and top executives of "bearing responsibility."

No question on how I voted on that little gem.