Immediate Release
January 26, 2026
For Information
sanfordlewis@strategiccounsel.net
413 992-8297
The Shareholder Rights Group (SRG) today released a critique of a recent survey report issued by the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. The analysis found that the survey report materially distorts its own data through selective framing, methodological flaws, and interpretive errors—raising serious concerns that the report could misinform ongoing policy debates over shareholder rights and the SEC Shareholder Proposal Rule 14a-8. The critique is available online here.
“While the underlying survey contains some useful information, our analysis concludes that the report’s narrative repeatedly diverges from the actual results, and overstates arguments for restricting shareholder proposals,” stated Sanford Lewis, Director and General Counsel of the Shareholder Rights Group.
Key Findings
· Costs Dramatically Overstated
o The Weinberg Center report mischaracterizes four-year aggregate company costs as annual costs, inflating figures by a factor of four.
o Reported costs are self-described, likely overstated, and may conflate routine governance expenses with proposal-specific costs.
· Benefits Largely Ignored
o The survey failed to ask respondents to quantify the benefits of shareholder proposals, despite a majority of respondents indicating that benefits range from modest to irreplaceable.
o Over half of respondents concluded that the benefits of Rule 14a-8 outweigh its costs—an outcome downplayed in the report’s analysis.
· Biased Framing Against Environmental and Social Proposals
o Survey questions improperly framed entire subject areas—such as environmental, social, and political issues—as presumptively illegitimate.
o Despite this bias, substantial portions of respondents continued to support proposals in these areas.
o The report nonetheless characterizes non-traditional governance topics as marginal, misrepresenting respondent views and ignoring evolving investor perspectives on material risk.
· False Narrative on Federal vs. State Oversight
o Contrary to claims by the report and its author, nearly 70 percent of respondents favor retaining federal administration of Rule 14a-8 when asked about long-term preferences.
o Support for shifting authority to states or allowing companies to set their own rules remains a clear minority position, including among company representatives and directors.
· Misleading Questions on Ownership Thresholds
o Survey questions omitted existing eligibility standards, skewing responses toward extreme thresholds that would eliminate nearly all shareholder proposals.
o Percentage-based thresholds presented in the survey would require tens of millions or billions of dollars in ownership, effectively silencing all but the largest shareholders.
· SEC Process Considered More Fair Than Portrayed
o A majority of respondents described the SEC’s shareholder proposal process as somewhat to very fair, a finding minimized in the report’s narrative.
o Broad consensus emerged that the SEC no-action process is preferable to litigation, offering speed, lower cost, and predictability.
o The survey author characterizes the results as reflecting widespread dissatisfaction, but the underlying data could instead indicate routine disagreement inherent in an adversarial regulatory process.
· Mischaracterization of Shareholder Democracy
o The report adopts an unduly narrow conception of shareholder democracy by treating the number of proposals that reach the ballot and majority vote outcomes as indicative of whether the process serves a mechanism of shareholder democracy.
o This framing overlooks the core democratic function of the shareholder proposal process: it provides shareholders of all sizes, and not only the largest institutions, with a structured, credible means of raising concerns, engaging boards and management, and placing issues on the corporate agenda.
Conclusion
SRG cautions that policymakers who rely uncritically on the Weinberg Center report risk being misled toward unnecessary and harmful restrictions on shareholder rights. SRG urges greater methodological rigor, neutral question framing, and independent oversight in future research on shareholder proposals—especially at a time when those rights are under increasing policy and regulatory pressure.
The Shareholder Rights Group is an association of investors formed to defend the shareowner's right to engage with public companies on governance, corporate accountability and long-term value creation.
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