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Here is how four companies are ignoring their shareholders’ votes

NYSE Euronext

Forget majority rules. In US-style corporate elections, it’s rarely so simple.

Investors can complain as loudly and clearly as they like, but corporate boards are often free to ignore them, with few or no immediate consequences. That’s true whether the protest involves ousting a board member or changing how the company does business.

That sound you heard yesterday was companies dumping 41,565 pages on the SEC’s doorstep

garbage trucks

Think of yesterday afternoon as a triple witching hour of US corporate disclosure: The final minutes of the final day for many big companies to file their latest quarterly reports—and a Friday afternoon, on top of that.

McDonald’s to Costco: You’re too cheap for us

ronald mcdonald mcdonald's

McDonald’s and Costco would seem to have a lot in common, what with their relentless pursuit of cost-conscious consumers in the name of value.

But this month, the fast-food giant snubbed the US warehouse shopping club, dropping it from among two dozen or so competitors, consumer-product companies and retailers that McDonald’s uses to assess executive pay.

Rejigging America’s GDP calculation requires dubious math, but it always did

Calculating a country’s gross domestic product is already an arcane business. So it’s little wonder that a few eyebrows went up yesterday on word that the US—specifically the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which does the country’s GDP estimates—plans to start counting a bunch of intangibles as part of GDP.

How much should you worry about North Korea? The SEC has some numbers on that

One measure of how seriously the corporate world has taken rising tensions with North Korea: Companies are talking about it a lot more in their regulatory filings.

When a 20% executive pay cut isn’t as painful as people might think

Air Products CEO John McGlade.

Air Products & Chemicals got some press recently when it was held up as an example of corporate America’s renewed dedication to paying CEOs only if they perform.

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