Stephen M. Davis is associate director of the Harvard Law School Programs on Corporate Governance and Institutional Investors, and a senior fellow at the Program on Corporate Governance. This post is based on remarks Professor Davis recently delivered at a memorial service for Rich Ferlauto. Ferlauto died this spring at the age of 60.
The memorial service for Rich Ferlauto was held on June 25, 2017 at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Virginia. Ferlauto died May 8. He was most recently a co-founder of the 50/50 Climate Project, and a former deputy director of policy in the SEC’s office of investor education and advocacy. He was also a founder and leader of the AFL-CIO and AFSCME’s capital stewardship program.
“Can we talk?” That was Rich’s signature email—many in the corporate governance community got those, as I did over 20 years, all the time. Well, Rich could talk. Indeed he could talk to corporates, investors, politicians. When Congressman Barney Frank needed to strategize, Rich would be there. When Pfizer’s Peggy Foran needed to find a labor voice to explore solutions, Rich was there. When he talked to media, he could be scorching: “outrageous” was his favorite word when interviewed on the latest scandal, as Tom Croft has written. If boards failed to fix a problem, or the SEC failed to act, Rich would thunder in newspapers, radio and television, warning that “the outcry would be profound.” Rich was cunning with words; for instance, I remember him crafting the brilliant phrase ‘say on pay’ to describe investor votes on CEO compensation. He pioneered the powerful word ‘stewardship’ two decades before the concept was embraced by US shareowners. John Kennedy once said of Winston Churchill, “he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” So it was with Rich.
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