Shareholders Do Less To Reshape Firms

Fewer shareholder generated proposals passed at public firms this year, in part because of disagreements among shareholders surrounding one of the most common types of proposals, separating the company's chairman and chief-executive-officer positions. Only one of these chairman-CEO proposals has passed at a Fortune 250 company this year (at Kohl's), in keeping with historic norms: since 2006, only four percent of chairman-CEO proposals have received majority support, usually at companies that had been underperforming.