When you're here, you're family... Public companies invite shareholders — all of them — once a year for a shareholder meeting. CEO Jeff Bezos may regret this corporate democracy in action — Fiery investors at Amazon got 12 petitions on the ballot for a vote on Wednesday.
Jeff should've hit up his stunt double... Amazon became a symbol of tough worker conditions, extreme wealth (of Bezos), and a force for gentrification in Seattle. Unshockingly, it attracted some pretty aggressive shareholder proposals. Here are our highlights:
- A resolution to make a company plan to fight climate change.
- A ban on selling facial recognition tech to governments (because they can be used for discrimination or creepily controlling, you know, society).
- A gender pay equity requirement.
- Disclosure from the executives on where they stand politically (Washington Post-owning Bezos has been accused of bias).
Losing votes can make a difference... The resolutions all failed, but there's still symbolic importance to a "no" — the issue gets raised in the news and execs have to talk about it publicly. Pressure like that can lead to future change. Now here's your election night vote coverage:
- 16%: That's Bezos' voting power based on his shares. We're guessing he voted "no" to all 12 proposals.
- 6.2%, 5.2%: The next biggest shareholders are Vanguard and BlackRock, brokerages that hold shares for regular investors. They tend to follow the recommendation of the board. That was "no."