Word: acsr
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...resolution asking Exxon to form a "broad-based committee" to study the implications of proposed Angolan oil investment, the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility last week turned in the most distressing performance of its debut season. Though the resolution raised issues which clearly call for deeper study, the ACSR's current reservations failed to address the purpose of the resolution or the urgency of the Angolan issue...
...ACSR objected that the proposed committee's membership would be too one-sided to produce an objective study of Angolan investment. ACSR Chairman Stanley S. Surrey, Smith Professor of Law, said, "A committee [such as this] just tends to confuse management's responsibility...
First, because of management's and investment banks' control of stock, such resolutions never attract 50 per cent of the shareholders' votes -- a fact the churches clearly understand. The ACSR, in objecting to the committee's composition, was objecting to the details of a proposal meant to be considered in a far broader political context. Resolutions such as these are intended to raise issues -- in this case, to pressure Exxon to establish a responsible study group. Any study committee that management would voluntarily establish in response to such pressure would no doubt be more "balanced," in the ACSR's sense...
Third, in recommending an abstention on the shareholder resolution, the ACSR exerted the least possible pressure on the Harvard Corporation to address the political questions raised by colonial rule in Angola. By recommending that the Corporation send advisory letters to the churches and to Exxon management, the ACSR exaggerated the risk in endorsing a shareholder resolution as a demonstration for an incontestably just political cause...
...whole the two results have not been very divergent," Surrey said Wednesday. "I think considering it's the first year for both of us, things went well. I think the ACSR itself worked very well--there were differences among individuals, but no deep ideological differences ever developed...