Shareholders express their dissent in different ways

All board members were re-elected by an overwhelmingly large margin, however some shareholders expressed a dislike for Anne Mulcahy as she drew the largest number of negative votes by a wide margin.

Mulcahy is probably best known as CEO of Xerox from 2001 to 2009, and she also served as chairman of the company’s board from 2002 to 2010. She currently chairs the board of trustees of the Save The Children Foundation and serves as a director of The Washington Post Company and Johnson & Johnson. She is a past director of Citigroup.

In its proxy statement, Target said MulCahy possessed extensive experience in all areas of business management, as she led Xerox through a transformational turnaround. That experience, combined with her leadership roles in business trade associations and public policy activities, provides the Target board with additional expertise in the areas of organizational effectiveness, financial management and corporate governance.”

Not all Target shareholders saw it that way, as 12% of the 597 million shares that were voted at the meeting voted against Mulcahy. The opposition to Mulcahy is noteworthy for the simple fact that the percentage of shares voted against other board nominees was significantly lower and ranged from just 1.7% to 4.8%.

In other matter voted upon at the meeting, a meaningful level of support was also demonstrated for two proposals submitted by shareholders. One proposal involved the issue of executive compensation benchmarking as was supported by nearly 30% of shareholders while a proposal related to electronics recycling drew supported from 24.6% of the shares voted at the meeting.