LESSONS FOR THE DISNEY BOARD: 3/4: Fearless: Wilma Soss and America's Forgotten Investor Movement by Robert E. Wright (Author), Janice Traflet (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2024
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
by Robert E. Wright (Author), Janice Traflet (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Americas-Forgotten-Investor-Movement/dp/1958682306
Shareholder activist Wilma Soss rocketed to fame in the 1950s fighting for the rights of the individual investor. But over the years, her legacy was almost forgotten.
Based on archival documents, this is the true story of how a disparate group of activist investors-from a PR star to a Holocaust survivor-found each other and became the advocates Fortune 500 management loved to hate.
Soss and her band of activists, including the incomparable Evelyn Y. Davis, leveraged the media to promote the rights of small shareholders. The idea was simple: buy one share of stock to gain access to shareholder meetings and remind management whom they reallyserve.
These "corporate gadflies" were determined to speak their minds, even if it meant bringing their own megaphones or being dragged out of public meetings. But their message was undeniable, and ultimately changed corporate America for the better. Increased opportunities in the workplace, improved shareholder voting rights and greater corporate transparency were just some of the reforms Wilma Soss and her Federation kicked off in the post-war era.
If you're looking for the intellectual heritage of 2021's WallStreetBets phenomenon or the reason Fearless Girl stands as a symbol of American optimism today, look no further than the life, times and efforts of the fearless shareholder activist, Wilma Soss.
1957 DISNEY
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelor. The book is Fearless, |
| 0:07.2 | Wilma Soss and America's Forgotten Investor Movement, |
| 0:10.8 | Professor Janice Trafflet at Bucknell University, and her co-authors Robert Wright, |
| 0:16.2 | we're speaking of Wilma Sauce now, it is the 1960s. |
| 0:20.5 | There's a new spirit in the land. John Kennedy is the president and Wilma is really |
| 0:27.0 | sophisticated about how she protests what she considers to be the presumption of |
| 0:31.3 | boards to ignore the shareholders. |
| 0:34.0 | As she constantly repeats at meetings, it's a revelation apparently at the time. |
| 0:40.0 | You work for us. |
| 0:42.0 | We don't work for you to the board of the |
| 0:45.1 | management of a company. Three meetings in particular. |
| 0:49.1 | CBS 1960 after the 64,,000 quiz scandal of fixing the outcome. |
| 0:58.0 | GE 1961 after the scandal of price fixing and electronic equipment. |
| 1:04.1 | And Comsat, which is a new concept, |
| 1:07.1 | Communications by Satellite in 1965, |
| 1:11.4 | where Wilma meets the Pinkerton's. |
| 1:14.3 | Professor, Wilma is getting stronger |
| 1:16.9 | and she's now famous and she sits in the front row. |
| 1:19.4 | Do the boards fear her? |
| 1:20.8 | Do they try to manage her? |
| 1:24.0 | Both. And you start seeing in some academic journals at this time advice by some in PR to corporations on basically how to handle the Wilma problem is the way they would weigh in that in a hallways and around the water coolers like how do how do we as the board and as CEO of a company |
| 1:45.4 | handle people like Wilma who are going to ask us tough questions at these |
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