Louis M. Thompson

Two emerging trends are likely to have a dramatic influence on investor and market behavior. One is the unbridled advance in technology. The other is the will of a majority of commissioners at the Securities and Exchange Commission and of lawmakers in Congress to give more power to investors. At first glance, these trends would […]

As public companies prepare for the 2011 proxy season, investor relations officers and other senior executives will need to re-invent themselves. All will confront a greatly enhanced world of shareholder communications stemming from the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC’s new proxy disclosure rules, and its proposed “proxy plumbing” reform bound to streak across the stage in […]

Imagine you’re an individual investor with shares in Diebold, the maker of ATMs and security systems. You’ve just sat down at the company’s annual shareholders meeting on June 2. Back stage, just minutes before taking the podium, CEO Thomas Swidarski learned the company’s share price has dropped 30 percent—in six seconds! You turn off your […]

The Compliance Week 2010 conference provided a series of “conversations” on risk assessment that revealed how far along leading companies have come in implementing that process, and gave some valuable insight into how executives can improve the information that boards of directors need to exercise their risk-management role. To evaluate the overall state of risk-assessment, […]

This is the third in a three-part series on corporate social responsibility. My first column, “The Value of Tailoring a CSR Strategy to Investors,” focused on the growing number of institutional and sovereign wealth funds looking for good companies with authentic CSR or sustainability programs. Last month’s column, “Time to Get Started on Your Sustainability […]

Why should companies that provide their traditional institutional investors a strong balance sheet, reliable cash flow, management credibility, an effective business strategy, and growth in earnings per share care about going beyond that to develop a sustainability strategy that attracts socially responsible investors? This column is the first of a two-part series that will answer […]

The past decade wasn’t kind to America’s investors. So why not turn the table and make the 2010s the “decade for the shareholder”? Investors were riding the dot-com wave from the 1990s when that bubble burst in the second quarter of 2000. Stock prices plummeted. Investors fled the markets and new public offerings began a […]

Corporations saw significant change in 2009 in how they communicate with shareholders, thanks to a confluence of emerging trends: changes in how the markets work, regulations affecting corporate disclosure and the proxy process, and an upsurge in investor activism. Companies need to take stock of what’s happened and reconsider their communications strategies going in 2010 […]