Governance Conference Focuses on Investor Activism

Investor Responsibility Research Center's (IRRC) Governance Conference Focuses on Investor Activism, as Harrigan Loses Calpers’ Post

OUSTER OF ACTIVIST PRESIDENT OF CALPERS VIEWED BY PANELISTS AS CORPORATE ‘PUSH BACK’. Institutional investors are viewing the ouster this week of Calpers’ President Sean Harrigan as more “push back” from the corporate sector, which is unhappy with the power that shareholders have gained post-Enron. Harrigan, a fervent shareholder activist and a Democrat, who also headed the regional division of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCWU) while he was at Calpers, was voted out of office on December 1 by the California Personnel Board. Harrigan was appointed to that five-member board by former Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat.

He was selected to represent the personnel board, which has one of the 13 directorships at Calpers, in 2000, and was subsequently elected Calpers’ president in February 2003. Ron Alvarado, a Republican, will replace Harrigan in that post on January 1. Alvarado's career has included stints as vice president of a real estate development company and as a former official in California’s consumer services agency and health and welfare agency. He also has worked in the federal government.

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