California Public Retirement votes against Sprint Director

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040412/fin [...] int_1.html


Reuters
Calpers votes against Sprint director
Monday April 12, 4:19 pm ET

WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - The largest U.S. pension fund said on
Monday it was withholding its votes from a Sprint Corp. (NYSE:FON -
News; NYSECS - News) director and voting against the company's
auditor, citing the auditor's consulting work.

The move by the California Public Employees' Retirement System follows
a decision by Institutional Shareholder Services, a proxy voting
advisory service, on Thursday to withhold votes for the same director,
Linda Koch Lorimer, citing the company's selection of board candidates
and its CEO's compensation.

A spokesman for Sprint, one of the largest U.S. long-distance and
cellular telephone companies, could not be immediately reached for
comment.

Calpers, which holds about 7.3 million shares of Sprint stock, opposes
giving auditing firms contracts for other services such as business
consulting, saying it can keep them from giving companies candid
financial reports.

Calpers noted in a posting on its web site that Lorimer was on the audit
committee of the board of directors that approved consulting work from
auditing firm Ernst & Young. Sprint dropped Ernst & Young last year in
favor of KPMG, after aggressive tax shelters set up by Ernst & Young led
to the departure of the company's two top executives.

In its proxy, Sprint said Ernst & Young's work ended with the auditing
of Sprint's 2003 annual results. Sprint also adopted rules last year
generally prohibiting auditors from performing consulting work.

The shareholder proposals favored by Calpers and ISS would call on
Sprint to separate the titles of chairman and CEO and to establish a
performance-based stock option plan. In its proxy, Sprint opposes both
proposals and cited ISS in support of its arguments.