19 Institutional Investors Join Rockefellers To Protest Exxon Policies One Week Before Annual Meet

[hatrack]

A campaign to persuade ExxonMobil to take climate change more seriously has won support from 19 institutional investors before a potentially explosive showdown at the annual meeting next week. A coalition of disaffected shareholders stepped forward yesterday, including public investment funds from California, New York, Illinois, Maine and Vermont plus the United Methodist Church and the AFSCME public employees' union. They intend to back resolutions calling for Exxon to appoint an independent chairman and to set up a task force tackling global warming.

Bill Lockyer, state treasurer of California, contrasted Exxon's view of itself as an oil company with the approaches of BP and Shell, which have attempted to re-shape themselves as broader energy providers using alternative sources of power. "Exxon Mobil is a company with lots of creative business talent," said Lockyer. "They have the talent to be nimble and if they want to stay around, they need to be."

The institutions that came forward yesterday hold 91m Exxon shares worth $8.6bn (£4.4bn). Although this is small in the context of the company's $505bn market capitalisation, they are hoping to harness a groundswell of support from fellow investors. The resolutions, which are opposed by Exxon's board, are sponsored by the Rockefeller family, whose ancestor, John D Rockefeller, founded Exxon's predecessor company Standard Oil in 1870.

"It is time for Exxon to heed the call of its shareholders," said Mindy Lubber, president of the environmentally conscious investors' network Ceres. "Exxon has taken a go-slow approach, failing to prepare for a leadership position in what we know will be a carbon-controlled world." The investors' central demand is that Exxon's chief executive, Rex Tillerson, should relinquish the role of chairman to an outsider in order to stimulate more debate on the company's board. A year ago, a resolution calling for such a change attracted 40% support, while a motion demanding action on global warming won 30%. Activists are optimistic of doing better this time.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/may/22/exxonmobil.oil?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

[Peace Patriot]

1. "...failing to prepare for a leadership position in...a carbon-controlled world..."

But oh boy have they been great leaders in a carbon-out-of-control world!

They got their Oil War in the Middle East--1.2 million innocent people slaughtered for their oil, and TRILLIONS of our tax dollars and the entire U.S. military hijacked for a corporate resource war.

Now they're working on Oil War II: South America. Exxon-Mobil this year sought to freeze $12 billion in Venezuela's assets, in a dispute over Venezuela's 60/40 share in its own oil profits--a deal that France's Total, Norway's Statoil, British BP and even Chevron agreed to. Not Exxon Mobil. In my opinion, they've been working closely with Donald Rumsfeld on a war plan against Venezuela and Ecuador, two democratic countries with leftist (pro-people) governments that control the largest oil reserves in the western hemisphere (both are members of OPEC) and that believe in using the oil profits to benefit the poor. Exxon Mobil timed its move to coincide with other manufactured "blows" against the Chavez government in Venezuela, including extraordinary treachery by the Bush Cartel client state, Colombia, in trying to hand Chavez a diplomatic disaster (dead hostages) when Colombia asked Chavez to negotiate hostage releases with the leftist guerrillas in Colombia (the FARC), and, recently, Colombia's effort to draw Ecuador and Venezuela into a hot war. Rumsfeld published an op-ed in the Washington Post the very weekend of the former plot (12/1/07) in which Rumsfeld lied that Chavez's efforts at hostage negotiation were "not welcome in Colombia" (when they had been days before). I'm fairly certain Rumsfeld was pulling the strings on that one. There have been many other dirty rotten schemes against Venezuela and its resource-rich Bolivarian allies. Bushite and Exxon Mobil footprints are everywhere in these efforts to destabilize and topple DEMOCRATIC governments that control oil and other resources that the Bushites lust for.

The best thing that we could is to dismantle Exxon Mobil, and other such global corporate predators--bust their monopolies, pull their corporate charters, and seize their assets for the common good.

I don't think we want these predators into alternative fuels. They will just fuck up the planet more, as they are already doing with corporate biofuel production impacts on the environment, the food supply, and millions of small peasant farmers (the best food producers, driven off the land into urban shantytowns).

And their destruction of the common good--in Iraq, in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world--is plain for all to see. Time to pull the plug. We charter these monsters and give them our permission to do business. It's up to us--the sovereign people of the U.S.--to reign them in. That is, indeed, WHY our political establishment has directly curtailed our right to vote, with voting machines, fast-tracked all over the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations. We the People of the U.S. are the biggest potential progressive force on earth, and we alone hold the direct legal right to de-charter many of the worst corporate predators.

A dispute among oiligarchic groups like this--the Rockefeller family and Exxon Mobil's board--is not likely in anyone's interest except the horribly rich. The games played at this level--by the rulers of public investment funds (for instance, teachers' retirement funds)--are very distant from the interests of ordinary people, including the teachers and others whose benefits are at risk and whose funds are already being horribly misused, by being invested in Exxon Mobil in the first place. Ordinary people are eating the scraps thrown out the window at these fatcat banquets--scraps that could dry up at any moment, as these corporate fuckwads destroy the food chain and everything else, including our democracy.

So, I am--how shall I put this?--SKEPTICAL of so-called "liberal" groups in charge of BIG MONEY trying to get a global corporate predator, that SHOULD BE dismantled, to instead profit from alternative energy. It's kind of like the Clinton's and "free trade" which destroyed economies in South America and throughout the third world, and is now destroying ours. The Democrats have been playing footsie with BIG MONEY for so long that they now see the world through BIG MONEY's eyes. I prefer FDR's attitude: "Organized money hates me--and I welcome their hatred!" The vast majority of people in this country--and in the world--need an advocate like that, who will BATTLE "organized money" on their behalf, rather than playing big investor games.

I WANT to applaud this, but I can't. I am EXTREMELY WORRIED about our democracy and the wholesale takeover of our government by "organized money" and their global corporate predator entities. An internal investor struggle may be good for the principle of investor democracy, but it is a side-show in relation to THE democracy, OUR democracy, and the essential, collective power of the people of the United States over business corporations. In short, our GOVERNMENT should kicking Exxon Mobil and other criminal corporations the fuck out of our country, and, at the very least, denying them ANY role in the development of alternative energy, because of what they have done in regard to OIL energy--war, massive pollution, gas gouging and profiteering, and ANTI-DEMOCRATIC plotting! Do we want a repetition? If so, then we can kiss the planet--and our irrelevant democracy--good-bye.

[Demeter]

2. You've Got My Vote

As Tansy Gold has postulated, we need a death penalty for corporations. If they can be virtual citizens, they can suffer the penalties for their crimes against humanity.