LESSONS FOR THE DISNEY BOARD: 4/4: 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
⏱️ 6 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.
1940-1980 WALT DISNEY STUDIOS
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The book is Fearless. |
| 0:05.0 | Is Fearless. Will you, Wilma Sauce, and America's forgotten now remembered |
| 0:10.7 | investor movement thanks to Professor Chaplin at Bucknell University |
| 0:14.4 | and her co-author Robert Wright. |
| 0:16.4 | What was achieved by these decades of attending annual meetings and challenging the board |
| 0:22.3 | on the stage. |
| 0:24.0 | We begin with qualified board directors who are female. |
| 0:28.1 | What a revelation professor. |
| 0:30.1 | Well, it's very interesting that she came to some of the board meetings in later years with a list of who she felt was qualified and who was being overlooked in terms of the nomination for boards. |
| 0:43.3 | And many people on her list actually became, |
| 0:46.1 | eventually were nominated and served on boards. |
| 0:49.5 | And yet some of them didn't want to be seen |
| 0:51.9 | as giving thanks to Wilma Sauce because they wanted to be |
| 0:55.6 | seen as getting it on their own merits, which they did as well. But they felt that somehow |
| 1:00.4 | being in public thanking Wilma Sauce might take away from the accomplishment. |
| 1:05.6 | But interestingly, a little, Wilma Sauce worried that perhaps she had made some mistakes in her |
| 1:12.4 | advocacy in terms of that did she inadvertently encourage |
| 1:16.6 | tokenism on board of having just one woman on the board just to make her go away. |
| 1:21.6 | In addition, this one I thought, what? |
| 1:26.0 | Eliminating miss or misses on stock certificates. |
| 1:30.0 | You've collected some of those, correct? |
| 1:32.0 | Yes, yes. |
... |
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