Shareholders Urged NOT To Protest Genocide

Shareholders urged NOT to protest genocide
By Catherine Danielson

Here's a story I doubt you will hear all about anywhere else...

American Funds is one of the largest families of investment funds ($700 billion), owned by Capital Group Companies, a huge group of investment management companies. There was a shareholder proposal made recently requesting the board to "institute procedures to prevent holding investments in companies that, in the judgment of the board, substantially contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity, the most egrigious violations of human rights."

I'm a shareholder in American Funds, so I received the proxy letter requiring me to vote on a number of proposals for the upcoming board meeting (on October 27th in LA). First, there was a list of very boring-sounding proposals about electing trustees, updating this, approving that, blah blah blah. The shareholder proposal request came LAST, and it was #8. What came FIRST was this:

"The board of directors/trustees recommends that you vote 'for' proposals 1-7 and 'against' proposal 8."

If you wanted to do this, all you had to do was to check that ONE box and not even read the rest. What do you want to bet that almost every shareholder just checked that one box, rather than go through all the trouble of reading the entire thing and finding out what Proposal 8
actually said?

The only way to find out more about Prop 8 was to read the enclosed 80-page Joint Proxy Statement. How many people do you think actually did that? But it was the only way to learn the biggest reason why the proposal was submitted, which was that American Funds companies have holdings in such companies as Petro-China, which does business in Sudan, where the government has conducted genocide in the Darfur region.

And you had to really do a thorough search *outside* the materials sent to shareholders to learn anything more. I did find something here.

Anyway, I found out that the proposal was spearheaded by Investors Against Genocide. Their website is here.