The relatively weak language of the
Council of Institutional Investors' policy statement, model letter, and model contract provision, quoted above, suggests that institutional investors recognize that convincing private equity funds to impose takeover-friendly charters on their portfolio companies may not be the "easy sell" that Treasurer O'Brien predicted in her speech.
Opler and Jonathan Sokobin found that firms appearing on focus lists distributed by the
Council of Institutional Investors between 1991 and 1994 saw their share prices outpace the S&P 500 by a substantial margin in the two years after being listed.
Ann Yerger spoke on behalf of the
Council of Institutional Investors, a lobbying group.
They have been the new activists, and they often work closely with some of the more active public-employee pension plans through organizations like the
Council of Institutional Investors.
As a result, trade associations long ago developed (for example, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce) to assert vigorously business's collective interest and effectively economize on the costs of collective action by taxing the would-be free riders In the case of institutional investors, there is really only one such group, the
Council of Institutional Investors, and Useem devotes virtually no attention to it.(29) Yet, in principle, this organization of some 100 members could coordinate the activities of institutional investors holding over $800 billion in assets (p.
Companies pushed to reform by members of the
Council of Institutional Investors subsequently outperformed the Standard & Poor 500 by 14 percent, according to a study by the Council.
Such a despotic situation hardly fosters competence, says Sarah Teslik, executive director of the Washington-based
Council of Institutional Investors. And it may drive an heir to demand a job for which he or she is unsuited.
The
Council of Institutional Investors, the principal trade group for pension funds, is reportedly opposing the adoption of poison pills, attacking compensation packages of top managers, and demanding--and in some cases successfully installing--outside directors on corporate boards, See "The Battle for Corporate Control," Business Week, May 18, 1987, pp.
For many public pension fund trustees, most notably, those whose pension funds are members of the
Council of Institutional Investors, proxy voting is one form of monitoring and improving the performance of the stocks that are held in their investment portfolios.
The
Council of Institutional investors, organized in January 1985, represents public pension funds owning more than $100 billion of assets.
Universal proxy cards have been advocated for by institutional investors, including by the
Council of Institutional Investors, as a way to ensure a fairer, less cumbersome voting process.
According to the
Council of Institutional Investors (CII), my 2002 petition to the SEC "re-energized" the debate over proxy access to nominate directors.
