PREVIEW:: #WALLSTREET: #INVESTORS: Conversation with Professor Janice Traflet re the beginning of investor revolt at annual meetings of Wall Street traded company corporation boards -- a lesson that might have enlivened the recent Disney investor melodram
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2024
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
1912 Bankers Trust Building NYC
Fearless: Wilma Soss and America's Forgotten Investor Movement
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 WallStreetBetsphenomenon 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 Sos
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is John Batchelor, conversation with Professor Janice Trafflet, co-author of a new book, Fearless |
| 0:06.8 | Wilmas Sauce and America's Forgotten Investor Movement, with her colleague Robert Wright, commenting on how Wilma saw us a public relations |
| 0:16.8 | master in the period after the Second War, during the war after the war, took it upon herself to invent protests at corporate meetings |
| 0:26.2 | that there to four had been a celebration, a very dull celebration of the status quo. |
| 0:35.3 | It reminded me during this flap about Walt Disney |
| 0:40.8 | that perhaps Nelson Peltz and other objectors to the Walt Disney insider game |
| 0:45.4 | might have done better by dressing up in some fashion perhaps as Disney |
| 0:49.9 | characters perhaps as Star Wars characters to gain attention for their protest movement. |
| 0:56.0 | Wilma Sauce certainly did, and here's Janice Trafflet to explain how she did it for the corporate |
| 1:01.3 | meetings of the 50s and 60s and 70s. |
| 1:04.5 | Janice Trafflet, Fearless, Wilma, Soss, and America's forgotten investor movement. |
| 1:09.8 | More of this tonight? |
| 1:11.8 | Well, first of all, the costumes were away for her. of this |
| 1:15.0 | and how to the costumes were away for her. She was steeped in the idea of free publicity. |
| 1:18.0 | And how to get free publicity to your cause. |
| 1:20.0 | And if you dress up in some type of theme that will garner you media attention when you show up to these |
| 1:26.5 | shareholder meetings, great. So for example, she goes to a GM meeting dressed in Victorian garb of you know long dress and you |
| 1:39.2 | have a hat the whole thing for the purpose of pointing out that General Motors is stuck in the |
| 1:46.0 | Victorian era in terms of how they treat women. Another time for CBS and the |
| 1:52.0 | quiz show scandals in the 60s. |
| 1:55.0 | She comes in it with as a cleaning lady, |
| 1:57.5 | with a mop in a bucket to clean things up. |
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