It was a good thing Free Enterprisers Tom Borelli, Peter Flaherty and Steve Milloy showed up at the Goldman Sachs shareholder meeting last Friday (March 31) -- otherwise the meeting would have been over in the blink of an eye.
We stretched out the meeting to the point where our shareholder resolution and related comments dominated the 30-minute meeting as reflected in post-meeting news coverage of our efforts by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times (UK), Reuters, Bloomberg, National Public Radio and The Independent (UK).
Meeting highlights include:
Borelli announced that we withheld our vote for director from BP chairman Lord John Browne. Playing off the new BP commercials asking "What's your carbon footprint?", Borelli asked Lord Browne about his own "carbon footprint" given BPs recent 200,000 gallon oil spill on the North Slope of Alaska and last years explosion at a BP refinery in Texas which killed 15 workers and injured others. Borelli pointed out that Lord Browne ought to pay more attention to worker and facility safety as opposed to BP's $100 million green public relations campaign that, for example, calls gasoline a "necessary evil."
Milloy announced the withholding of our vote for CEO Hank Paulson as director based on unanswered questions concerning Paulsons potential misuse of Goldman Sachs as a vehicle to promote his personal hobby (environmental activism).
Flaherty (President of the National Legal and Policy Center) presented our shareholder resolution requesting a report on Paulson's apparent conflict of interest concerning his ongoing chairmanship of the Nature Conservancy as well as the donation of 680,000 acres in Chile to an organization with links to his son and the Nature Conservancy. In a surprise move that stunned Paulson and the audience, rather than present the resolution from a microphone in the aisle of the auditorium, Flaherty climbed across a security barriers, climbed on the podium and took over the lectern from which Paulson was running the meeting. The bewildered Paulson relinquished the lectern and unhappily endured Flaherty's 5-minute presentation of the proposal.
Goldman's response to the shareholder proposal was non-responsive and superficial - in effect it was, "the board extensively reviewed these matters and approved them." Goldman denied that the Nature Conservancy was involved at all in the land deal. Milloy pointed out that the Nature Conservancy was paid a consulting fee of $144,000 for its involvement and was an acknowledged affiliate of the donee (Wildlife Conservation Society). Goldman did not respond to Milloy's rebuttal.
The shareholder Q&A period was dominated by Borelli's extended colloquy with Paulson about the Chilean land deal and Nature Conservancy chairmanship.
It was no surprise that we lost the shareholder vote by a wide margin the resolution was unavoidably filed late and so was not included in Goldmans proxy statement. Only shareholders at the meeting (primarily Goldman employees) could vote and you had to raise your hand to get a ballot not something too many employees would be willing to do in front of their boss. Management (i.e. Paulson) voted all the rest of Goldman's outstanding shares (about 473 million) against ours (178).
After the meeting, we were mobbed by reporters from around the world. Our interviews lasted so long that Goldman security herded us out.
We have since uncovered new information about the land deal (to be revealed soon) and we will continue to monitor Goldman's environmental activities closely. To paraphrase The Terminator, well be back...
