 |
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
 |
It's business as unusual at shareholder meetings
© St. Petersburg Times The atmosphere at annual shareholder meetings so far this season ranges from party-hearty to positively funereal. Coca-Cola, gathering Wednesday in New York for the first time with 1,200 in attendance, glossed over most business rough spots with a parade of celebrities from sports heroes Muhammad Ali and Cal Ripken to rock star ("bit early in the day for me") Jon Bon Jovi. Live music was supplied by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. What did they have to do with Coke? Not much, but it sure beat listening to shareholders whining about increasing competition from Pepsi and protests over worker rights overseas. Among the new directors to join Coke's board: Barry Diller, chief of USA Networks (which controls St. Petersburg's Home Shopping Network.) At the more sedate Wachovia Corp. (as the former First Union is called) meeting in Charlotte, N.C., bank executives tried to deflect criticism from John Boyd. As the head of a Virginia-based black farmers group that has protested Wachovia's lending practices, Boyd stood up to say that the bank hasn't delivered on a promise to help him start a credit union. Wachovia CEO Ken Thompson begged to differ: The bank provided $25,000 and other assistance, he said, but the "ball was in (Boyd's) court." Two years ago this month, I spoke to part-time Floridians and SunTrust Bank shareholders Charles and Lois B. Edwards of Longboat Key. At that year's SunTrust annual meeting, the couple offered a resolution stating that, to remain competitive, the bank must adopt a policy of seeking out women and minorities as directors. That proposal failed by a 5-to-1 margin. But maybe it had an impact, after all. This week, shareholders at the Atlanta company's annual meeting approved the nomination to its board of directors of Karen Hastie Williams, 57, a partner in the Washington law firm Crowell & Moring and an African-American woman. That means SunTrust's 17-member board now includes two women, and two blacks. The prime season (and the theatrics) of 2002 annual shareholder meetings continues for another month or two. Stay tuned to Act 2. Next week, Philip Morris's name change to Altria Group will take place at its own annual meeting in Richmond, Va. Has the tobacco giant started a trend? More companies than ever seem eager to drop their names to distance themselves from some negative image of the corporations. In banking, First Union may have bought Wachovia, but the buyer in this case was only too happy to swap its tainted (poor service) name. Even if it inherits the harder-to-pronounce Wachovia. American Home Products, caught in the 1997 recall of two drugs linked to heart problems used in a slimming cocktail known as fen-phen, is only now recovering from the fallout. To help, the company this year renamed itself Wyeth. Which brings us to the Atlanta company whose security services after Sept. 11 at U.S. airports made the word shoddy synonymous with its name: Argenbright Security Inc. After relentless bad publicity about employees failing to spot weapons, stay awake or speak English on the job, Argenbright this week says it will dump its name for two new ones by this summer. The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, says those names will be: Cognisa, for the business handling commercial security for big corporations; and First Vector for that portion providing general airport services. Short takesSWEET TO SWEETER: Bob Peiser helped build Tampa's Vitality Beverages Inc. through acquisitions of the Lykes family juice business and won regional kudos for his business skills. But at 53, Peiser got ants in his managerial pants and last month left to find a new turnaround challenge. Well, he just landed in Sugar Land, Texas, where he was named president and chief executive of Imperial Sugar Co. The company is the largest processor of refined sugar in the United States and markets its products under such brand names as Dixie Crystals and Diamond Crystal. Imperial Sugar filed for bankruptcy protection early last year and emerged from Chapter 11 late last summer . . . WANTED: CEOS WITH CLOUT: How do big metro areas pitch themselves to the business world as the place to be? Well, this week, the greater Washington, D.C., area launched a $650,000 cable TV, print and radio ad campaign that features two "known" CEOs: William A. Haseltine, chief of Human Genome Sciences; and J.W. "Bill" Marriott Jr., chief of the international hotel chain. Could Tampa Bay do the same thing? Sure! As long as you first weed out the underperforming companies, the companies not based here, the companies nobody's ever heard of, and the local companies with frequent CEO turnover. Oh, never mind . . . MEET HUIZENGA, THE BANKER: South Florida's Wayne Huizenga has been rather quiet since his high-profile days as entrepreneur billionaire following such big-name start-ups as Blockbuster Video and AutoNation. Now his son, also named Wayne, is making a little splash in the button-down world of banking. He's part of a planned startup in Broward County with a most clever name: Bank of Florida. -- Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8405.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
|
Times columns today Robert Trigaux Howard Troxler Jan Glidewell From the Times Business desk |
