Investors supported a number of stockholder proposals that would give investors a role in the nomination of directors and the ability to make changes with a simple majority vote. “The voice of shareholders is being ignored and has been ignored for many years,” said James McRitchie, publisher of a popular corporate governance portal CorpGov.Net. “Once again, let’s send a message to the board...

CBS Chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves brought in a compensation package totaling $69.3 million last year, a modest drop from his 2016 haul of $69.6 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission...

B&N shares lost nearly 40% of their value over the last 12 months as the retail chain struggled to compete with Amazon. It currently has a market value of about $565 million. In a letter to the B&N board, Sandell Assett Management CEO Thomas Sandell calls the steep decline “shocking” since “physical books, and physical bookstores, are not going away anytime soon”— and the chain’s expected future sales justify a higher stock price...

Viacom disclosed some of the executive compensation numbers this week. But the just-filed proxy at the SEC shows that CEO Philippe Dauman did better than you might have thought — especially with the $17 million he received for his contract renewal. That brought his total to $54.2 million, the most he has seen since 2010, when he pulled down $84.5 million. The package includes $4 million in ...

Sumner Redstone ’s twilight years have become a soap opera, and here’s the latest plot twist: Last year he offered his daughter, Shari, $1 billion in cash and stock to give up her 20% stake in National Amusements — the theater chain that controls 80% of Viacom and CBS . She rejected the November 2014 offer, according to The Wall Street Journal which disclosed the development. It came with ...

Veteran TV exec Geraldine Laybourne has been named a member of the board of directors of Canadian animation studio and distribution company 9 Story Media Group . A cable pioneer in the 80s and 90s, Laybourne led the team that created Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite, exiting in 1996 to serve as president of Disney/ABC Cable Networks. She later founded Oxygen Media, where she served as Chairman and ...

But other Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia shareholders seem unimpressed with the agreement to sell the troubled media and merchandising company to Sequential for $6.15 a share split between stock and cash. Martha Stewart Living’s stock price is down 13.3% to $6.05. It closed on Friday at $6.98 after word of the deal negotiations spread. Investors appear to believe that nobody will top Sequential’s offer in the 30-day “go shop” period Stewart has as part of the deal...

Hoffman was once one of Hollywood’s top stuntwomen and the first ever elected to the SAG Hollywood board of directors, and later to AFTRA’s Hollywood board and national boards of directors. But today she’s a broken woman: Twice she has been diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury that she says was the result of one too many concussions sustained during her many years of stunt work...

Peter Liguori had a busy year in 2014, and was paid handsomely for it, according to a Tribune Media SEC filing announcing a secondary stock offering by some of its largest shareholders. With big slugs of stock and option awards — accounted for now, although they vest over several years — the CEO’s compensation package came to $23 million, up from $8.76 million in 2013. The tally includes: $1.60 ...

Vivendi chairman Vincent Bollore has upped his stake in the French media giant to 10.2% only days after an activist investor challenged his strategy for the company. Bollore acquired an extra 27.7 million shares for $687 million. His stake is now double what ...

Vivendi chairman Vincent Bollore is being urged to sell off the company’s Universal Music Group by activist shareholder P Schoenfeld Asset Management to boost the company’s profitability and share price. Universal Media Group , which is currently 100% owned by Vivendi, is the world’s largest music group. Bollore reportedly rejected an offer as recently as last week from John Malone’s Liberty ...

Billionaire shareholder activist Carl Icahn withdrew his proxy battle at Gannett and agreed to restrictions on his stock purchases after the company accepted several governance policies he supported, both sides announced this morning. The pact applies to the publishing company — which includes USA Today — that the newspaper, TV, and digital power plans to spin off this year. With the agreement ...

Franco-Tunisian media mogul Tarak Ben Ammar and Havas Media Group France chief exec Dominique Delport have been proposed to join the supervisory board of French media giant Vivendi . The moves, expected to be ratified and confirmed at the Vivendi shareholders’ meeting in May, represent a further consolidation of chairman Vincent Bollore ’s vision for the group. The duo will almost certainly have ...

Corporate governance watchdogs probably won’t like the fact that CEO Joseph Ripp will also be chairman of the 10-member board after Time Warner spins off its publishing unit. After all, the directors are supposed to hold the CEO accountable. But at least the Time Inc board doesn’t have any apparent shrinking violets or corporate novices. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes says the group has “a wealth ...

The activist investor isn’t limited to Twitter and CNBC to broadcast his views. Hot off his $800M windfall this week from the sale of half his Netflix shares , today he introduced a site, Shareholders’ Square Table , where he says he’ll “discuss what can be done to change our current, dysfunctional system of corporate governance” that results in CEOs and boards “that are strangling shareholders ...

So much for the effort by some activist investors and advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services to protest 21st Century Fox’s corporate governance practices . In a shareholder meeting that lasted less than 34 minutes, CEO Rupert Murdoch said that all of the company’s board candidates had been re-elected. Company critics also wanted changes that would require the chairman to be independent ...

Critics say Disney's recent efforts to empower and enrich Iger revive bitter memories from a decade ago when BusinessWeek and others regularly slapped Disney with failing grades for corporate governance: Michael Eisner was both chairman and CEO and

Investors rarely reject management's views on such matters, especially at a time when a company's stock is soaring. Yet despite the 250% increase in Netflix's price over the last 12 months, shareholders today resoundingly supported several changes to

Corporate governance practices at Viacom have been so bad for so long that I was tempted yesterday to just laugh off the announcement — made right after the annual shareholder meeting — that it has appointed Inside Edition anchor Deborah Norville to its