Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise in support today of the Corporate Governance Reform and Transparency Act of 2017, and I appreciate my good friend, Sean Duffy's work on it. Over the past 3 decades, I have advocated for responsible shareholder activism and urged for corporate boards of directors to perform their responsibility of careful stewardship, particularly in their essential functions in evaluating corporate strategy, hiring able hardworking executive management, and, critically, capital allocation. For example, as Berkshire Hathaway's CEO, Warren Buffett, recommends, corporate compensation committees must be composed of ``saber-toothed tigers,'' not ``house cats,'' in their work. Likewise, investors must take their responsibility to hold boards accountable for their irreplaceable role in maximizing returns for shareholders, while executing a corporate strategy that balances shareholder returns with employees and customers. So the question is: How can investors effectively lower agency costs and actively meet this accountability mission? For 20 years, this has been a much-discussed area by thoughtful experts like Warren Buffett, ISS founder Robert Monks, Marty Lipton, and Lawrence Cunningham. Grad schools at UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, Yale all researched this challenge. Organizations of institutional investors and corporate directors all proffer best practices. And how do we best align these interests for this mission, but make conflicts of interest readily apparent?…”