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June 24, 2003
Apria Democratizes Director Elections
by William Baue
Apria Healthcare Group set a precedent as the first company to allow shareowners to nominate
candidates for board of director elections.
SocialFunds.com --
On June 11, Apria Healthcare Group
(ticker: AHG) announced that it would grant shareowners access to the company proxy to nominate
candidates for the board of directors. Apria, whose headquarters is in Lake Forest, California,
offers home respiratory therapy, home infusion therapy, and home medical equipment services. It
had almost $1.3 billion in sales in 2002.
 "It has become painfully obvious over the past
few years that corporate America must improve board room dynamics," said Ralph Whitworth, chair of
Apria's board of directors.
Apria claimed that the policy is "the first of its kind
voluntarily adopted by a publicly traded company."
"The reform at Apria was initiated by
the board of directors, but theirs is no normal board," said James McRitchie, editor of the CorpGov.net website that advocates corporate
governance reform. "Ralph Whitworth, the chairman, and Richard Koppes are well-known corporate
governance activists whose faction increased their influence on Apria over a protracted campaign
lasting several years." Mr. Koppes served as general
counsel for the California Public Employee
Retirement System (CalPERS) for a decade in the 1980s and 1990s when it became active in
corporate governance reform advocacy.
Apria's announcement came two days before the end
of the public comment
period to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the very issue of shareowner access
to the proxy for nominating directors.
"I think the significance of Apria's
announcement is certainly heightened, given the SEC is considering amending their rules to allow
shareholder nominees for director to be placed on the corporate ballot," said Mr. McRitchie.
Mr. McRitchie co-filed with the Committee of Concerned Shareholders a rulemaking petition
with the SEC in August 2002 that initiated the Commission's reconsideration of its regulations
governing shareowner access to the corporate proxy.
"The Business Roundtable, representing corporate CEOs,
doesn't want any additional changes in the area, even though they supported an open ballot in
1977," Mr. McRitchie told SocialFunds.com. "Institutional investors are almost unanimous in
supporting an open ballot--they differ primarily on what the threshold [or percentage of company
stock held by nominating shareowners] should be and that difference is heavily weighted by how far
they think they need to compromise."
Apria set a five percent threshold, requiring one or
more shareowner to own that much of the company's common stock for at least two years in order to
nominate director candidates on the company's proxy ballot. CalPERS, which manages $138 billion in
assets, and the Council of Institutional
Investors (CII), which represents investors with $3 trillion in assets, both suggested a five
percent threshold to the SEC.
"The five percent ownership threshold is high and would present
an even more difficult challenge at huge corporations, such as ExxonMobil (XOM)," said Mr.
McRitchie.
A three percent threshold is favored by two major labor unions: the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees' Pension
Plan (AFSCME). The Social Investment
Forum (SIF) and Responsible
Wealth, which represents "a network of hundreds of affluent Americans," advocate a one percent
threshold.
In his comment letter to the SEC,
Mark Latham of the Corporate Monitoring
Project made a suggestion that would allow companies to pick which threshold suited them best.
"Regarding the complex issue of determining the rules for director nominees to appear in
the company-paid proxy, one strategy to consider is letting shareowners decide this by vote at each
company," Mr. Latham wrote.
Mr. Latham suggested that the SEC could define two or three
standardized thresholds of access to the proxy instead of imposing a single "one-size-fits-all"
threshold.
"If the Commission receives too much pressure from CEOs, Latham's suggestion
might be a reasonable compromise," said Mr. McRitchie.
Apria's policy could represent the
first step in setting Mr. Latham's suggestion in motion, if other companies follow suit and declare
their own thresholds and rules for shareowner nominated candidates to appear in company proxies.
"I do expect Apria's model to be modified and copied, especially if corporate governance
rating systems such as those of Institutional Shareholders Services, GovernanceMetrics, Moody's
Investors Service and Standard & Poor's give a higher rating to Apria because of its actions," said
Mr. McRitchie. "I believe they should; it certainly fits the market's judgment that firms with
fewer management entrenchment devices should be assigned a higher value."
Mr. McRitchie,
who is an Apria shareowner, sent a personal thank you note to Mr. Koppes. "I'm always delighted
when a board moves toward democracy; it's even better when I own a little stock in the company,"
said Mr. McRitchie.
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SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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