Waters Corporation
Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT) designs, manufactures, sells, and services analytical instruments involved in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC), mass spectrometry, thermal analysis, rheometry, and calorimetry. Got that? Waters’ clients include pharmaceutical, life science, biochemical, and industrial companies as well as academic institutions and government agencies. Instruments produced by Waters are used in processes such as identification of new pharmaceutical drugs, food safety analysis, and environmental and water testing. Waters is the world’s largest manufacturer of HPLC instruments, chromatography columns, and related consumables and is one of top three players in mass spectrometry. Waters holds the largest …
What Goes Up Doesn’t Always Go Up
The latest disaster in the financial markets has once again shown that some of the biggest risks investors face derive from the excesses of free markets themselves. This time it was unregulated lending, leverage and speculation. In 2000 it was over-optimistic and at times corrupt Wall Street analysts, gobbling up creative corporate accounting that massaged income statements to show profits where there were none. Some of the other systemic risks embedded in financial markets are barely on the radar screen of most investors. These range from unregulated pollution causing global warming, to the worrisome increase in nuclear proliferation during the …
Home Depot and the Endangered Forests of Patagonia
Ancient forests in South America…Home Depot…environmental groups protest. It may sound like a Hollywood script about the timber battles of the 1990s, but unfortunately it describes the players in the latest chapter in the ongoing battle to protect remaining endangered forests in the world. In the heart of the Patagonia region of Chile, the multinational consortium of financiers, HidroAysén, is proposing to build five hydroelectric dams on the Pascua and Baker Rivers. The dams, if built, would flood two pristine rivers and nearly 11,000 acres of Chile’s most biologically rich forest, agricultural and ranching lands. Included in this area would …
It Seems to Me
“When power leads man to arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” ~John F. Kennedy As I write this, toward the end of 2008, the world is looking crazier and scarier than ever. I don’t want to add to the multitude of punditry already in place. It’s time to seek the wisdom, clarity and solace of poetry: ANYBODY FOR MONEY Ogden Nash Consider the banker He was once a financial anchor. To pinch our pennies he would constantly implore us, And if we wouldn’t pinch them ourselves, he would pinch them for us. …
Yes, We Can, Too
Everyone, from the progressive Left to “Obamican” crossovers, has high hopes for the new administration. Social investors are no exception. We share the expectation that the Obama administration will take a hands-on approach to many of the problems we’ve addressed for years, including climate change and other environmental priorities, predatory lending, inadequate regulation of the financial markets and much more. There’s a subset of policy reforms, however, that are being championed more or less exclusively by the social investing community, and those are the subject of this article. What follows is a brief summary of some of the policy reforms …
‘Say on Pay’ Gathers Steam Heading Into 2009
Are we the only ones wondering why the daily sight of Wall Street and Detroit execs begging for bailouts while making off with millions hasn’t incited rioting in the streets? Consider just one case. Former Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O’Neal walked away with $161 million dollar exit package shortly before the company’s high stake bets in the mortgage market unraveled, revealing losses that exceeded all the profits the firm had earned over the past 20 years. Investors tallied their losses, taxpayers subsidized the takeover of Merrill, and thousands of employees joined the ranks of the unemployed. How did we arrive …
Moving Forward
Joan Bavaria wrote this column, From the President, for the past 15 years. Joan was passionately engaged with the world on many levels, more than any person I have ever known, and her columns reflected her humanity. From the small to the large, from the individual to the global, her deeply personal columns tied her observations of the world to the need for action and a call for our engagement in creating a better world. Joan died on November 18, 2008 after an extended and courageous battle with ovarian cancer. Our world is much the lesser for her passing, and we …
Open MIC, founded by Trillium, files shareholder resolutions with 10 Internet Service Providers
Professor Jeffery Rosen recently wrote in the New York Times, “As more and more speech migrates online, to blogs and social-networking sites and the like, the ultimate power to decide who has an opportunity to be heard, and what we may say, lies increasingly with Internet service providers, search engines and other Internet companies…” Members of a coalition of investors, lead by Trillium, have filed shareholder resolutions with 10 publicly-held U.S. providers of Internet access, urging corporate boards to report on the impact of the companies’ Internet network management practices on public expectations of freedom of expression and privacy. The …
Trillium joins ProxyDemocracy's list of "Respected Shareholder Activists"
Today Trillium Asset Management Corporation is pleased to announce that it has joined ProxyDemocracy’s list of “Respected Shareholder Activists” and has made its intended proxy votes available in advance of company annual meetings. ProxyDemocracy aggregates proxy voting data and provides tools to help investors put their voting power to use. Joining in this effort is consistent with our mission to explore and develop all possible means of social progress offered by the capital markets, and educate other concerned investors in their use; and to support organizations working to build a just society and a better world. To see Trillium Asset …
Statement on Recent Developments in Aguinda v. Texaco
Trillium Asset Management Corporation Statement on Recent Developments in Aguinda v. Texaco December 4, 2008 Contact: Shelley Alpern (617) 292-8026, x 248 On November 26, 2008, the court-appointed expert charged with assessing Chevron’s liability for damages in connection with Aguinda v. Texaco raised that figure by two-thirds, from $16.3 billion assessed in April to $27 billion. Richard Cabrera had concluded in a 4,000 page report to the court last spring that 100% of Chevron’s former sites are extensively contaminated with cancer-causing toxins, and that an earlier clean-up Texaco claimed it had completed was ineffective. Texaco, which dumped more …
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