Administration January 1, 2007

Fannie Blasts Restraining Order Request

January 25, 2005 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Mortgage giant Fannie Mae is fighting back against a Michigan county pension fund trying to block payouts to Fannie Mae executives with a request to a federal judge to block the move.
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The request by the Wayne County Employees’ Retirement System, a company shareholder, for a temporary restraining order would inject chaos into an already complicated legal process, according to a Reuters report.

It said the action sought by the Wayne County fund would result in “substantial hardship” to the company and force it to divert resources it is using to cooperate with ongoing internal and federal investigations into its accounting, Reuters reported. Fannie said the Wayne County pension fund request would require the company to produce millions of pages of documents and dozens of depositions.

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The Wayne County fund, which covers 5,800 retired county employees and owns $1 million in Fannie Mae stock, last week asked the court to block compensation payments to former Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines and former Chief Financial Officer Timothy Howard (See  MI Pension Fund Slaps Fannie Mae with Lawsuit ). The fund argued that the legal move was needed to help Fannie boost capital and to repair confidence in the market after billions in accounting problems were uncovered last year.

The pension fund also asked for documents and depositions that Fanniesaid were too extensive to be gathered and submitted within the requested seven days.

Administration December 29, 2006

GE Agrees to Disclose Business Arrangements with Exec Pay Advisers

December 29, 2006 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - General Electric Co. has agreed to a request by a group of shareholders to go beyond regulatory requirements and disclose any business ties it may have with the firms that advise it on how to pay its top executives.
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Dow Jones Newswires reports a GE spokesman said the company will make this information available in its upcoming proxy statement, which it usually files in early March ahead of the April shareholders’ meeting. In October, a group of 13 institutional investors sent letters to the 25 largest Standard & Poor’s 500 companies requesting the information.

The concern of the institutional investor group is consultants may be reluctant to provide objective advice on executive pay if they rely on management’s approval to win other business at the companies they advise. “It is critical … that a compensation consultant be free of any conflict of interest, perceived or actual,” the letter said, according to the news report.

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The group of shareholders plans to announce Tuesday the results of their letter campaign, a spokesman for Connecticut Treasurer Denise Nappier told the news service. He said the shareholders may submit proposals asking investors to vote in favor of the disclosure if companies do not volunteer to make the information public.

As for GE, the company spokesman said GE used the services of New York compensation consulting firm Frederic W. Cook & Co. and had no business agreements with that firm beyond compensation consulting.

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