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The Berkshire board is recommending shareholders vote against the proposal, saying "that as long as Mr. Buffett is Berkshire's CEO, he should continue as Board Chair and as Berkshire's CEO."
But it notes that "as has been stated on numerous occasions by Mr. Buffett in the past, once Mr. Buffett is no longer Berkshire's CEO, a non-management director should be named Board Chair."
Buffett has said his son Howard should get the chairman role.
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Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger ride in a cart outside the exhibition hall at the 2019 Berkshire annual meeting. CNBC/Fred Imbert |
While Buffett would be affected, efforts by advocates for corporate governance reforms to separate CEO and board chair positions are not aimed at him alone.
The resolution's sponsor tells the Wall Street Journal it has filed similar proposals for Goldman Sachs, Coca-Cola, Mondelez, Salesforce.com, and Home Depot.
And CalPERS tells the Journal it generally supports separating the roles at all the companies in which it owns stock.
It certainly doesn't make a big deal about it in its pre-meeting SEC filing that discloses how it will vote its Berkshire shares.
It merely mentions that the shareholder proposal is one of three it will support, along with calls for Berkshire to report on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with its insurance operations and its efforts to increase employee diversity.
Instead, the CalPERS filing focuses on another proposal it is co-sponsoring that asks the board to "publish an annual assessment addressing how the Company manages physical and transitional climate-related risks and opportunities."
It also discusses why it will withhold votes for two directors on the Berkshire Audit Committee, Susan Decker and Meryl Witmer, for not disclosing environmental risks and "a lack of responsiveness" to its "engagement requests."
It does not say anything about withholding a vote for Buffett as chairman. |
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| Buttons in a mock campaign to elect Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger as Chairman are pictured at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, May 4, 2019. REUTERS/Scott Morgan |
While CalPERS is the largest state public pension fund in the country with over $450 billion in total assets under management, it won't have a lot of clout at Berkshire on its own.
It owns nearly $2.3 billion worth of Berkshire shares, but that's just 0.3% of its market value.
Buffett alone has a 32% voting interest in the company, and shareholders have strongly rejected past shareholder proposals opposed by Buffett and the board.
In last year's balloting for chairman, Buffett received 97.8% of the vote. |
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