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IBM stockholders meet quietly in Tulsa(Daily Oklahoman, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Apr. 26--TULSA -- IBM, one of the world's most-revered business nameplates, brought its 2006 stockholders meeting to Oklahoma on Tuesday and attracted only 250 shareholders to the Tulsa Convention Center. Shareholder and former employee Michael Kusi sat in a half-empty convention hall and observed the obvious before IBM Chairman Samuel J. Palmisano called the meeting to order. "I have been surprised at how low-key IBM has become in comparison with, say, Microsoft," said Kusi, a physician at a community clinic in Tulsa and a Broken Arrow resident. Kusi was speaking about a company that booked $91 billion -- with a "b" -- in revenue last year. A company that claims a cash stockpile of $13.7 billion and earned almost $8 billion in net income in 2005. But IBM shed its personal computer business in 2005 to focus on three areas in which it dominates, computer systems, software and business services. So the crowd was a bit thin, but it still attracted the usual number of shareholder activists, who poked at IBM management over issues of executive compensation, outsourcing and a downsizing of its pension program for employees. Janet Krueger traveled from Rochester, Minn., to get her shots in at the compensation and retirement plans devised for Palmisano. A retired 23-year IBM employee and a former "Watson Scholar" with the company, Krueger offered a shareholder proposal that would require greater disclosure of executive compensation. "IBM should be an example of good corporate governance, not a company that does the absolute minimum required by law," she said in support of her proposal. By Krueger's calculation, Palmisano will earn at least $10,000 per day from IBM upon retirement. She said she added it up and concluded he could claim $1 billion in retirement income. "I only wish that someone owed me a billion dollars," Palmisano replied to Krueger's allegations. Still, her shareholder proposal won 41.7 percent of shareholder support -- including proxies -- in a losing effort. "They take seriously anything that gets into double digits," Krueger said of the company's board of directors, who sat on the first two rows of the auditorium. "I think they are listening." Only one of nine shareholder proposals won, and that was a proposal to allow the shareholders to implement changes by a simple majority rather than a "super majority" of 75 percent. In his prepared remarks, Palmisano emphasized IBM's steller financial performance -- it announced a record quarterly dividend increase from 20 cents to 30 cents per share Tuesday -- and its commitment to innovation. The meeting concluded in less than two hours after Palmisano considered about a half dozen questions from the audience and some submitted via Internet ahead of the meeting. Jim Askew of Boulder, Colo., brought things to a close with a final assault on executive compensation and IBM's decision to implement a 401(k) plan for employees instead of a traditional pension plan. "If you look at how they voted, it got about 40 percent of the votes for it," Kusi said afterward in reference to a pair of proposals dealing with executive compensation issues. "It is not an issue they can really ignore." |