Why do companies make this so complicated? 

The past few weeks have yielded no fewer than three new proposals for "shareholder engagement", from Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), the Shareholder-Director Exchange (SDX), and The Conference Board (TCB). We've read every word of all three, including the 76 page(!) white paper from TCB. We also considered this subject ourselves years ago. 

All three disappoint us to varying degrees. Despite appearing to care deeply about investor views, they all represent a kind of triumph of corporate indifference and insularity. We know this because none of them urge BoDs to ask us investors what we really want out of our portfolio companies, and then listen closely to our answers. Each has their own quirks and flaws, as well.

We critique these efforts, and set forth a simple (five items!) program for real engagement, in a current blog post.