Resources for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)

Cox Will Be Punished Over Proxy Access

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The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday made the correct decision on a controversial shareholder rights issue. Now the agency's chairman, Christopher Cox, will pay the price.

He will hear from public pension funds that he's anti-investor. Congressmen opposed to the action will sound off and perhaps call him to Capitol Hill to explain himself.

The dissenting commissioner and lone Democrat on the panel, Annette L. Nazareth, said she didn't see a way to vote with her three fellow commissioners Wednesday and still "claim to be supportive of shareholder rights in the longer term." The head of the AFL-CIO said Cox "caved in to political pressure to take away a fundamental right."

What exactly did Cox and his two Republican fellow commissioners do to incite the calumny? Simply codify what had been long-standing SEC practice until a court overturned it. They said, in essence, that companies don't have to allow votes on proposals to force companies to list the names of board candidates put forth by shareholders on official corporate voting materials.

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