Activist: BlackRock Has Power to Influence (Updated)

Of the 10 largest institutions holding Yahoo! stock, I spoke with eight. Most portfolio managers covering the company or governance officers already were aware of some of my arguments about the company before I spoke to them on the phone.

BGI was one of the two institutions better protected than Fort Knox in terms of being open to discussing the issues that Yahoo! was facing. I first called BGI's San Francisco office and asked to speak to Mr. Friedman. I was told that he was no longer with the firm. I asked to speak with people on his team. The receptionist seemed confused and said that such a team wasn't in place. After calling again and asking to speak to someone responsible for voting BGI's shares, I was put to a woman's voice mail. I never received a return call.

One last attempt and voice mail message also were unsuccessful in at least having a discussion about the issues at play in the vote. Based on these interactions with the firm, I assumed no governance team existed at BGI (which I understand now is not the case; they were just simply difficult to get in touch with). Maybe I was just unlucky in my phone calls. However, at eight of the other top 10 holders of Yahoo!'s stock, who presumably were just as busy as BGI in determining how to vote their shares, I found it very easy to engage in a discussion.

Corporate governance is seen by the vast majority of institutional holders as an investment that creates far more value to their clients than the cost. I'm quite sure that if clients of these large institutions knew which ones were responsibly voting their shares on the clients' behalf, and which ones were rubber-stamping votes for less effective CEOs and boards, there would be ramifications seen through large-scale transferring of assets.

That's why sites like Proxy Democracy are so important. All of these large institutions need to be held accountable for how they vote their shares on behalf of clients. These institutions also need to understand that, it's not important how often you vote, or how many people you employ in order to vote, but how you vote your shares that matters to clients.