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Recent Posts by Marc Gunther
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Gold mining is a dirty business, for many reasons. In poor countries, where most of the world’s gold is mined, regulations are lax, cyanide is commonly (and carelessly) used to separate gold from waste rock, and children work under unsafe conditions, literally scratching out a living from the earth. These problems have been well-documented by NGOS and by reporters for the New York Times, which did a great series on gold in 2005, and more recently in this fine investigative article by the Associated Press. But corporate America is responding with an ambitious effort to reform the mining industry, led by Tiffany & Co., Wal-Mart, independent jewelers and NGOS. Forward-thinking mining companies like Rio Tinto are on board, too. My new feature story, Green Gold, which appears in the
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You won’t hear much about gay marriage this week at the Republican convention, but it remains a hotly-contested political issue, particularly in California, where a fall ballot initiative would overturn the state Supreme Court decision giving same-sex couples the right to wed. John McCain supports the ballot Proposition 8 while Barack Obama and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger oppose it. A recent poll shows that most Californians side with their governor, Obama and gay rights groups like Equality for All. Should gay marriage win at the ballot box in the nation’s most populous state, that would be big news.A political win for same-sex marriage would also reflect the fact that in corporate America, support for gay marriage – or at least workplace policies that treat same-sex
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What book best explains the today’s world of business — the credit crunch, housing bust, diving dollar, etc.? That’s the question that reporter Frank Ahrens of The Washington Post put to some biz luminaries, resulting in a lively story in today’s paper. Interestingly, my friend Nell Minow (of The Corporate Library and movie mom fame) and my former college classmate Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. recommended the same book, David Copperfield, and cited the same quote, the advice given by Mr. Micawber to David: ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.’ Following that advice will protect you from the worst of economic upheavals. Ah, yes.
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I’m writing this post on my Apple PowerBook G4, which ordinarily does very well what I need it to do—except that right now it is sitting on my lap and giving off enough heat to keep me warm on a cool day. That might be welcome if today were a February day in Denver. But it’s August. I’m in the mile-high city where the sun always seems to shine to moderate a discussion on sustainability for Coca Cola Enterprises, the big bottling company; to attend a bunch of events on the environment and energy; and to soak up the atmosphere as the Democrats and thousands of hangers-on here to nominate Barack Obama. The Coke discussion went well, I thought—participants included the major of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, who talked about the drought and water conservation, Majority Leader
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The other day, John McCain visited an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to call for more offshore drilling. The massive Chevron rig produces 10,000 barrels of oil a day. Meanwhile, I just filled up my new Honda Fit with gas for the first time. After driving 282 miles, I bought 9.47 gallons at $3.62 a gallon. So I’m getting 29.6 mpg, mostly in the city. What’s the connection? The actions of millions of Americans like me—as we trade big cars for smaller ones, drive less, or do both—are going to have a whole lot more impact on oil prices, more quickly, than drilling for more oil. In fact, they already are. Gas prices have been falling by more than a penny per day and the price of oil has dropped from about $147 a barrel to about $115 a barrel in the last couple of months for one
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The Rockefellers vs. ExxonMobil
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Big doings this morning in Dallas. ExxonMobil holds its annual meeting, highlighted by a long list of shareholder resolutions about corporate governance, climate change, renewable energy, discrimination against gays and lesbians and the company’s sponsorship of the Masters. Why, there’s even a shareholder resolution, submitted by a tiny, politically-conservative mutual fund, to ban all shareholder resolutions!
The annual brouhaha at XOM is the topic of this week’s Sustainability column at fortune.com and cnnmoney.com. Here’s how it begins:
It’s hard to imagine why ExxonMobil shareholders are so unhappy. After all, the world’s largest publicly-owned energy company rode the surge in oil prices to a record $40 billion in earnings last year, making it by far the most profitable Fortune 500 company. Shares are up 10% in the last year, while the S&P500 has fallen by just as much.
But disgruntled shareholders want more - a lot more. They want ExxonMobil (XOM, Fortune 500) to overhaul its management structure, promote renewable energy, help solve the problem of global warming, support its gay and lesbian workers, and to oppose a ban on women members at the Augusta National club, home of the Exxon-sponsored Master’s golf tournament.
The growing discontent should make for a good show at ExxonMobil’s annual shareholder meeting Wednesday in Dallas, where 19 shareholder resolutions are on the ballot. Granted, shareholder proposals aren’t binding, but this year ExxonMobil’s disenchanted investors have a key ally: Descendants of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, which evolved into ExxonMobil, who are deeply unhappy about the company’s direction.
I must tell you that this column was edited heavily, which doesn’t happen often. One thing that was left out–my belief that the job of chairman and CEO at ExxonMobil or any other company should not be held by the same person. You can read the rest of the column here.
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