Nell Minow Quotations

Usually, $100,000 invested in the company is enough to make them pay attention.

Yes, it's meaningful money, ... But it's still a fraction of what was lost.

Short term, it continues to be a terrible problem.

Right now, executive pay is like a scavenger hunt. You have to get little pieces of data here and little pieces of data there.

I was surprised. If they were just neglectful they would do a better job than this. It's beyond neglectful. It's a conflict of interest problem.

He is not the chairman of a public corporation. He doesn't create shareholder value. He is essentially a regulator, and he is running an unregulated monopoly in a way.

He runs off the cliff and then realizes there's nothing underneath him.

I think the change is significant -- and troubling. For one thing, it is in addition to the other termination payments, which the first one was not. And it is larger, for no apparent reason. Are they expecting a change of control?

We had a period in which companies went public entirely too quickly. Some of them never should have.

This report brings to light the role mutual funds play in enabling excessive compensation and helps investors determine which ones are committed to shareholder value and merit their business. The time is now for mutual funds to use their voting power in the interest of shareholders to tie executive pay to actual job performance.

There is really no justification to pay for any living or traveling expenses at that level, particularly now that he is in retirement.

You cannot be on the board of directors and also be doing investment banking work for the company. I don't care if he steps out of the room or not. You cannot be the umpire and the pitcher in the same game.

You'd think they'd be bending over backwards to make sure that anybody they brought in at this point was squeaky clean.

And we know what a risk factor that is. It produces the kinds of problems that we are seeing at AIG: failures of integrity and financial reporting.

You're supposed to tell the truth and be open and transparent and candid about your prospects -- not obfuscate.

This could go any number of ways ? it could be weeks before this is over.

They got the words right and the substance wrong, ... I'm very disappointed.

It's a headache. It's pure profit, and maybe that's why nobody wants to think about it.

It's thrilling because Disney has made a lot of progress but still has a lot to prove to shareholders, and this is tremendously enhancing to their credibility with shareholders.

It's, generally speaking, the result of some pressure from shareholders. We're seeing more and more of that, particularly at companies that have not kept faith with shareholders. It's very performance driven.

It's a very serious concern that nobody's paying attention to.

Creating value ... The question is, 'Did they earn it?'

It's definitely caveat emptor. They'd better kick the tires carefully.

It's considered an atrocity now. Unless he says he'll take care of everyone, he won't get that.

The Internet Entertainment Writers have gone beyond the usual suspects in nominating performers like Owen Kline ('The Squid and the Whale') and Naomi Watts ('King Kong'), demonstrating their willingness to recognize excellence that transcends age or genre.

I'm not saying that everyone has to agree with our grades, but the burden of proof should be on (the funds) to explain what they see in these companies that we don't.

I'm willing to pay people based on the value they create.

In the post-Enron era, we have seen reforms from just about everybody -- from the Congress, from the (Securities and Exchange Commission) and from the stock exchanges, ... Everybody has stepped up to the plate except for the Delaware courts.

The line between corporate governance and strategy is a fine one. Increasingly, strategy is a legitimate question for shareholders.