The Gadfly's Sting

The self-styled protector of small stockholders at corporate meetings is Xanthippe-tongued Wilma Porter Soss, fiftyish, who once showed up at a U.S. Steel meeting in a 1901 puffed-sleeve dress and ostrich-plumed hat appropriate, she said, for a management "50 years behind in its stockholder relations." With little stock (e.g., ten shares of U.S. Steel worth $831.25) but big ideas and a thirst for publicity, she has for a decade harassed U.S. Steel and other corporations, with small success.

Last week U.S. Steel was forced to go along with a pet Soss project. On proxy ballots mailed out for the annual meeting May 2, management included a Soss proposal that stockholders be permitted to vote on whether they want a secret ballot in proxy voting, the first such proposal in corporate history. She contends that so much corporate stock is held by employees that they need the protection of a secret ballot to vote against management proposals. When Mrs. Soss first petitioned the corporation for her proposal, it refused. Mrs. Soss took her case to the SEC, which, without ruling on the merit of the proposal, told the corporation to put it on the ballot.

Also on the ballot are U.S. Steel's objections : under present rules, any stockholder can remain anonymous by registering his stock in the name of a bank or broker; secret balloting would seriously restrict recounts and court challenges of close proxy battles; the practical details for working out the system are immense.

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