Top funds joined Apple dissenters
OPPENHEIMER, VANGUARD VOTED WITH ACTIVISTS
mercurynews.com
When Apple held its annual meeting in May, activist investors made a lot of noise about the company's backdating scandal and the job Apple directors were doing.
It turns out that these generally small but vocal shareholders weren't alone in their concerns. Many of the leading mutual fund investors in Apple - including household names such as Vanguard and Oppenheimer - sided with the activists, recent regulatory filings reveal.
"It's pretty clear that you had a much broader rebellion than Apple would like the investing public to believe," said Patrick McGurn, special counsel at the corporate governance unit of RiskMetrics, a financial research firm that advises investors how to vote in corporate elections.
An Apple representative was not available for comment.
Of the 50 mutual funds with the largest stakes in Apple, at least 38 voted against Apple's management on at least one issue. And at least 18 of those decided not to vote for two or more of the company's directors up for re-election.
Vanguard, for instance, withheld its votes from Apple directors Bill Campbell, Art Levinson and Jerry York, who make up the company's audit committee, which oversees the company's financial statements. One of the upshots of Apple's backdating investigation was that it was forced to restate and lower its past earnings by $84 million. |
