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Occupy Monsanto is planned for 9/17/2012
What power do stockholders have? Can shareholders make a difference? One Bay Area man, Sam Begler–full disclosure: who I have known for over 30 years and is a full-on hippie and an organic chef–has a proposition: Don’t just Occupy Monsanto, buy Monsanto. Or at least shares in Monsanto. On the Buy Monsanto! Facebook rallying page he proposes:
If WE can buy enough shares of MONSANTO stock WE can gain the controlling interest and END THE INSANITY of CORPORATE THINKING that makes the goal of MONOPOLIZING THE FOOD SUPPLY OF THE ENTIRE PLANET an acceptable business model.
Now granted it might take a lot of people–and at $79.15 per share at current closing price, a lot of money–to gain controlling interest in the mega-corp, but what if enough people concerned about Monsanto’s creepiness bought stock and attended shareholder meetings and actually stated their positions at shareholder meetings?
Any buyers?
8 Comments
A study of Monsanto’s internal structure would be useful. Many corporations are rigged so that large blocks of voting stock — blocks that together make up the majority of the voting stock — are owned by the people running the corporation.
I would urge not giving Monsanto any money.
I know it’s theoretically doable. But would there not be money for the management of Monsanto in acting dishonestly toward its stockholders by favoring what they [managers] personally have already invested in, instead of what the newer occupying stockholders tell them to faavor?
That’s a lot of stock to buy
there are 535.41M shares outstanding.
I agree with Phoenix Woman 100% on this. Not only what she said is correct, but oftentimes Corporations have Series of Common Stock and Series of Preferred Stock. The preferred stock may have more voting rights than any common stock, and that preferred stock may not even be available on the stock market. Insiders only. The early Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors make sure of that. They can structure it however they want. The only real requirement? Transparency and Reporting. As long as they fully disclose it in the Public Filings, they can do it.
http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
The key is for a very wealthy (bloc of) progressive(s) to make a play for a controlling stake. Even that doesn’t always work. I don’t know the internal stock structure of Monsanto, so I’m not going to poo-poo the idea on its face. Its a nice idea, but I do think caution and research should be the first agenda. It may be easier to just do a grassroots campaign, as is already being done on so many fronts, to expose the GMO and Roundup issues, then to help with spreading the word on consumer boycotting, and to push for legislation that will guarantee labeling. In the EU, where labeling is required, people don’t buy the GMO or hormone-injected stuff. That’s why labeling is so opposed by Monsanto here. I would just hate to see a large number of progressives individually start buying up shares, only or the management to short them and make them eat it, only to buy them back from the progressives (who lost their shirts) at a discount to repeat the process. Its like betting againt the house. Carl Icahn and Warren Buffet can do it, but not many can. Just a thought.
This will never work. In the unlikely event that we do buy enough shares, they can simply issue more, diluting ours.
Instead of owning 200mm out of 400mm, we’d have 200mm out of 500mm.
It’s a nice idea in theory, but probably won’t work out in practice.
There have been various shareholder initiatives that I’ve been involved with in terms of other mega-corps – such as trying to change WalMart’s anti-female mgmt policies – that never make the diff at the shareholder voting levels.
Monsanto is such a gargantuan company with too many mega-rich 1%ers, like Bill Gates, backing it, that an effort like this would most likely fail.
Nice try, though.