 |
California
Public Employees’ Retirement System
Office
of Public Affairs
(916)
795-3991 • www.calpers.ca.gov
Pat
Macht, Assistant Executive Officer
Contact:
Clark McKinley, Information Officer
PressRoom@calpers.ca.gov
|
May 13, 2008
PRESS RELEASE
CalPERS Seeks Shareowner Advisory Vote
on Executive Compensation at Tech Data Corp.
SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Public Employees’
Retirement System has asked Tech Data Corporation investors to support a CalPERS
proposal to let shareowners cast annual advisory votes on executive compensation
plans.
Shareowners will vote on the nonbinding
Proposal 3 at the information technology distributor’s annual meeting on June 4,
2008.
Dennis Johnson, Senior Portfolio
Manager, Corporate Governance, said in a CalPERS letter to
shareowners:
“Shareowner voting results of an
advisory vote would promote substantive dialogue, encourage independent thinking
by the board, and stimulate healthy debate for the purpose of holding management
accountable for stock performance.”
The company reported in its 2008 Proxy
Statement that Tech Data directors and executive managers received pay increases
“while delivering significant long-term absolute and relative stock
underperformance to shareowners,” Johnson said.
For example, Tech Data underperformed
the Russell 3000 Index by 32 percent and its industry peers by 84 percent in the
five years ending April 30, 2008. It also trailed the index and peers for one-
and three-year periods.
“CalPERS believes communicating
non-binding shareowner sentiment (positive or negative) about executive
compensation is an effective alternative to withholding votes from individual
directors,” Johnson said.
He also said boards of other U.S.
companies have allowed such advisory votes on compensation including Aflac,
Verizon, RiskMetrics, Par Pharmaceuticals and Blockbuster, and that the
United Kingdom and Australia have allowed advisory votes without
experiencing any loss of shareowner value.
CalPERS owns approximately 703,000
shares of Tech Data, which is based in Clearwater, Florida. A copy of the CalPERS letter to
shareowner is in the press room of the pension fund’s Web site at www.calpers.ca.gov.
CalPERS is the nation’s largest public
pension fund with assets totaling more than $247 billion. It provides retirement
and health benefits to approximately 1.5 million State and local public agency
employees, retirees, and their families.
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