The Active Shareholder : Exercising Your Rights, Increasing Your Profits, and Minimizing Your Risks

Today many of the 40 million individual investors are making their voices heard - largely through a shareholders rights movement spearheaded by such organizations as the American Association of Individual Investors, National Association of Investors Corporation, and the United Shareholders Association. Small investors, once largely ignored by corporate boards, are no longer silent. Understandably concerned about dwindling dividends, unethical investment patterns, and flagrantly overcompensated CEOs, just to name a few problems, small investors are no longer silent.
The Active Shareholder is one more important way that you - as an often neglected small investor - can become empowered and demand your due rights. The only comprehensive guide to specifically address your prerogatives as an individual investor, The Active Shareholder carefully takes you through the impact of federal and state regulations - from SEC mandates to staff shareholder laws to show you precisely what you can and cannot expect to achieve with your holdings.
You'll also discover which companies are - and are not - responsive to the needs of its shareholders. You'll come to understand the important differences between the rights of preferred shareholders and those of common shareholders as well as the differences between the roles and influences of individual and institutional investors. Armed with this and other information, you'll learn how to exercise your rights to positively affect corporate earnings and, in turn, your investment performance in particular, you'll learn how to prepare for and respond to a proxy with the help of clear guidance on how to access and interpret company information and disclosure documents, so that each of your votes is an important step toward corporate profitability. The book highlights the power - and limitations - of the process by presenting several front-page proxy battles that dramatically illustrate key points.
The Active Shareholder also shows how you can minimize your investment risks by becoming more knowledgeable about the corporations in which you have stakes. You'll also get guidance on how to access the performance of the company and how to react effectively to it - as an individual shareholder and as part of a cohesive shareholders' group. The book also demonstrates how, as a more knowledgeable and active shareholder, you can help to steer corporations toward more socially responsible investment patterns.
While The Active Shareholder shows what you can and cannot do at present, it also tracks important trends that may extend or limit your rights in the near future. The book discusses possible SEC changes in its accepted proxy process - and how these changes might affect your earnings as an individual shareholder, your degree of investment risk and the influence of preferred and common shares. At the same time, the book takes a hard look at another pattern - the increasing number of highly restrictive antitakeover laws by states and how these laws may diminish the power of both common and preferred shareholders.
Realistic in its assessment of the current and possible future limitations on today's investors. The Active Shareholder's overall message is nonetheless energetic and positive. Its coverage concludes on a high note, with a complete resource section in the appendix, which provides the names, addresses, and phone numbers of leading investor associations and organizations that you can turn to for information and support in the effort to secure your rights as a small shareholder.
An indispensable handbook for every individual investor, The Active Shareholder is also important reading for members of corporate boards who must come to understand the dimensions of this powerful new grassroots movement, as well as for corporate planners, pension fund managers, institutional investors, investor relations personnel, and policymakers.