Washington, D.C. – American Consumer and Investor Institute CEO Blaine Luetkemeyer joined Brody and Luke Mullins on the Wolves of K Street podcast for a wide-ranging discussion on why the organization is working to protect American investors from the unchecked power of foreign-owned proxy advisors and how ACII is built for the political landscape as it exists today, not 20 or 30 years ago. Following are excerpts from the interview:
On the foreign-owned proxy advisor duopoly and its impact on U.S. investors:
Luetkemeyer: “One is a German company, and one is a Canadian company. And their business model is to go to the stockholders and say, ‘We watch these companies, we understand their business models and the rules and regulations — we would like to vote your shares and have an influence on this to protect your business, and your shareholder rights.’
“Well, that sounds good — but the problem is that they have a political agenda that’s more important to them than running the company in a profitable way that makes sense for the shareholders themselves.
“If you’re a shareholder and you sign your rights over to these firms, you’re quite frankly shooting yourself in the foot… We need to curtail them and give individual stockholders the ability to say yes or no, with full transparency into what’s really going on.”
On what it takes to get things done in Washington:
Luetkemeyer: “My record is somebody who was able to get a lot of stuff done, and it’s hard work. It’s really hard work to pass a bill, because you’ve got to not only pass it in your House, you’ve got to pass it in the Senate, and then you’ve got to come together and make sure all the parties are okay with whatever changes are made… Too many people who are on the fringes don’t want to do that work.
“And if you look at why they’re really there, and watch what they say on the floor and in committee, it’s all about them playing to the media so they can go home and beat their chest. They don’t care. It’s about them instead of the issues. It’s about them instead of their country. And that’s what’s frustrating.”
On the unique role of ACII:
Luetkemeyer: “We’re small enough and new enough that it makes us kind of nimble. We can do some things that other organizations can’t — you know, you’ve got to go through the board, you’ve got to go through all of your other checklists of things that you got to do. Here we’ve just got a few people who have got some ideas and [we] discuss within ourselves the direction we go and we can be very quick in responding to certain situations… It can be more responsive and more reactive, and we can not be bogged down by some of the bureaucracy that quite frankly is there with some of the trade associations.”