Mike Langberg has a an opinion piece in today's San Jose Mercury News titled "Sun seems hearing-impaired on shareholder concerns". Langberg talks about the Sun shareholder proposal that was approved at the shareholders meeting. The proposal that was approved recommended getting rid of Sun's anti-takeover defense. The article said that so far this year there have been 25 proposals to remove poison pills at public companies in the U.S. and of those 16 have passed. His main point is that "Sun ignores last week's vote at its peril". He says that if some change doesn't happen the shareholders might unseat board members at next years annual meeting.
I'm still interested in finding out more about William Steiner the shareholder who put forward the proposal. I wonder if these kinds of shareholder proposals are a hobby for him and what motivates him to submit shareholder proposals.. It would also be interesting to know how many of his proposals pass.
I hear that Sun is doing more lay offs. I talked to a Sun employee today who told me a couple hundred more IT employees were just notified that they are being laid off. I can tell you from my time at Sun that being in a company that is constantly doing lay offs is demoralizing.
