Just a Little More Shareholder Apathy

The Northrop Grumman Corporation filed its Form 8-K yesterday and reported:

The shareholder proposal to reincorporate the Company from Delaware to North Dakota under the new North Dakota Publicly Traded Corporations Act was not approved with a vote of 226,210,028 shares against, 13,350,892 shares for, and 1,974,740 abstentions.

This is not really shocking, as all the corporations--except American Railcar, which boasts Carl Icahn as majority shareholder--that have considered such a move have rejected the proposal. I have never thought that more than a handful of companies would actually make the move, although I admit I did think that there might be a few closer votes given the way the market has behaved in the past couple years.

Perhaps it is simply the case that shareholders really don’t want more of a voice in their corporations. More likely, though, I suspect that shareholders are, as a group, even more apathetic that I originally thought.

--Josh Fershee