How I Voted My General Electric Proxy

I love proxy season. I wrote about my Coke proxy on Kapitall Backstage. Rather than overwhelm another site with my personal proxy positions, I will post them here.

BOARD STRUCTURE:

General Electric (GE) has a slate of the entire board up for election. This is a good thing; some companies have staggered board appointments to prevent shareholders from replacing the board all at once. This means shareholders have less power and the board doesn't have to respond to takeover offers.

COMPENSATION COMMITTEE:

CEO, Jeffrey Immelt:
Salary:$3,300,000:
Total Compensation:$14,096,603.

Even after all the stock has fallen, I like G.E. and plan to hold the stock. I was going to vote for all the proposed slate of directors unitl I saw the compensation of CEO, Jeffrey Immelt.  Now, I know the guy has a tough job managing over 300,000 employees, but this has been a tough year for everyone. Shouldn't it have been a tough year for Immelt too? And this is not to mention all ther perqs. Private Jet, apartments, security etc. I don't blame him for getting all he can out of the board, so I'll blame the board's compensation committee. Thus, I voted FOR all the board members except the compensation committee. Members of the GE compensation committee are as follows: Andrea Jung, Ralph Larsen, Sam Nunn and Douglas Warner III.

GENERAL CORPORATE GOVERNANCE:

The other shareholder resolutions all concerned corporate governance that concerned greater management accountability to shareholders: I voted for all of them except for an independent study of a breakup of GE. I think GE should not be broken up and an independant study would be a waste of time. I'm sure management and the board consider a breakup every year.

The company does an excellent job of communicating with shareholders via their website. The GE 2008 proxy statement can be found in the investor relations section of the ge.com.

Disclosure: I own GE. I plan to continue to hold it. I've bought GE for a few family members' IRAs. I am short 10 strike calls against one-tenth of my GE position.