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Zynga has given its new CEO big incentives to sell the company

don mattrick zynga ceo

US social-gaming company Zynga hasn’t just given its new chief executive a pay package worth as much as $100 million over five years. It has also structured the package in a way that could encourage him to try to sell the company sooner rather than later.

This company successfully thwarted investors’ efforts to reign in executive pay

We recently told you about four companies ignoring their shareholders’ votes. One was Hecla Mining, a silver producer that held the polls open longer than planned when it looked like shareholders were going to reject management’s pay package.

The vote is only advisory, but Hecla’s stalling worked: Instead of failing 49.6% to 46.7%, the company’s say-on-pay vote passed with 53.7% of the vote.

Why Wal-Mart’s $15 billion stock buyback may not be as great as it seems

Hugh Jackman Wal-Mart shareholders meeting

When Wal-Mart Stores does a thing, it does it big. The stock buy-back it announced at its annual meeting today is no exception, at $15 billion, hot on the heels of an earlier $15-billion repurchase plan.

So it’s probably a good time to remember that stock buybacks generally aren’t the unparalleled good that they can seem at first glance.

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.

US-listed companies doing business in Iran: $540 million in revenue and counting

Statoil in Iran

Economic sanctions on Iran have been getting tougher in recent years, and the United States tightened the screws a little more last summer with the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (PDF).

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