This presentation may include some forward-looking statements. It is possible that actual results may differ materially from any expectations or predictions expressed in this presentation. Additional information regarding factors that could cause such a difference appears in the section titled Forward-Looking Statements of our Form 10-K and Form 10-Q SEC filings, and in our earnings press releases, which can be found on our website at www.investor.prudential.com. This presentation may include references to adjusted operating income or to earnings per share, or EPS, or return on equity, or ROE, which are determined based on adjusted operating income. Adjusted operating income is a non-GAAP measure of performance of our financial services businesses that excludes certain items. Adjusted operating income is not a substitute for income determined in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, GAAP, and the excluded items are important to an understanding of our overall results of operations.
For a reconciliation of adjusted operating income to the comparable GAAP measure, please see our SEC filings on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, and our earnings press releases, which can be found on www.investor.prudential.com.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is John Strangfeld. I'm Chairman and CEO of Prudential Financial. This meeting of the shareholders is called to order. The agenda has been provided for you on your chair. Consistent with our efforts to go green, we've presented the shareholder ballot on the other side of the agenda. I intend to move quickly through the formal business portion of the meeting in order to leave as much time as possible for your questions and comments. We are streaming audio of this meeting on the internet so that as many shareholders as possible can listen to today's proceedings. I would like to introduce a number of people at this time. Joining me on the stage this afternoon is the Chief Governance Officer, Vice President, and Corporate Secretary, Peggy Foran.
I would like to introduce members of Prudential Financial's board of directors who are seated in the audience, and I'll ask them to stand as their names are called and remain standing until all names have been called. Tom Baltimore, Gaston Caperton, Gil Casellas, Gordon Bethune, Bill Gray, Connie Horner, Jim Cullen, Martina Hund-Mejean, Karl Krapek, Jim Unruh, and Mark Grier, who also serves as vice chair. All of them and I are nominees for director in today's election. Thank you. Next, I'll recognize several members of our senior management team who are also seated in the audience. I will ask them to stand and be introduced and remain standing until all of their names have been called as well.
They are Ed Baird, head of our international business; Charlie Lowrey, head of our U.S. businesses; Rob Falzon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Susan Blount, Senior Vice President and General Counsel; Barbara Koster, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer; Rich Lambert, Senior Vice President and Chief Actuary; Nick Silitch, Senior Vice President and Chief Risk Officer; Scott Sleyster, Senior Vice President and Chief Investment Officer; and Sharon Taylor, Senior Vice President of Human Resources. Thank you. Susan Blount and Peggy Foran are also my fellow proxies. I'd like to introduce Bob Sullivan, a representative from our independent registered public accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers. Finally, I'd like to acknowledge the Inspectors of Election, Thomas Ferrari and Sanford Bernstein of Computershare Trust Company, N.A. I'll now turn this portion of the meeting over to Peggy Foran, the Corporate Secretary of Prudential Financial. Peggy?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The minutes of the 2012 annual meeting of shareholders are available for inspection. If anyone wishes to see them, please see me after the meeting. Notice of this annual meeting, the proxy statement, a form of proxy, or a notice of internet availability were mailed to shareholders of record commencing on March 26, 2013. An affidavit to that effect will be filed with the records of the meeting. The Inspector of Election has reviewed the voting procedures and submitted a report verifying the number of shares represented by proxy. Proxy received from shareholders of record as of March 15, 2013, are entitled to notice and to vote.
The inspector further states that at least 324,726,437 shares of common stock and Class B stock, approximately 69.49% of a total of 465,299,523 shares of common and 2 million shares of Class B stock outstanding, and entitled to vote as of the record date, are represented at this meeting by virtue of valid proxies on file before the meeting began. The inspector has advised that a quorum is present, this meeting is duly convened and may proceed.
Thank you, Peggy. The agenda and guidelines for this meeting have been printed on the meeting program. I intend to follow the order of business as set forth on your program. In order to move the meeting along as efficiently as possible, please hold your questions and comments for the appropriate time in the program. There are 4 voting items on the ballot today. A short discussion period will follow the presentation of each of these items. If you'd like to ask a question or make comments about the business matters to be voted upon, please raise your hand to alert the members of our staff who are present in the audience with microphones. Please hold any general questions and comments regarding the company's plans, strategies, or operations for the general discussion period following the report on the business.
If you have any questions on personal issues that are not directly related to business matters or you'd like information about Prudential's products, please see one of our associates in the reception area who will be very happy to assist you. We will proceed to the business items. I now declare the polls open. Our first order of business is the election of directors. There are 13 directors to be elected, each to serve a term of one year. The Board of Directors recommends the shareholders vote for all of the nominees. Are there any questions or comments on the nominees for directors? We have a question.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Hold it. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You have good cookies out there, I want to tell you. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, before casting my vote for election of directors, I hope to learn more about your role and that of Mark Grier in events leading to what became known as the Lederman versus Prudential case and its predecessor, the Prudential Securities matter. I read a number of articles describing how hundreds of plaintiffs, former employees of Prudential, are suing the company for secretly paying advanced, nonrefundable legal fees to their lawyers, Leeds, Morelli & Brown. Some refer to these nonrefundable legal fees as bribes. Bribes to silence Prudential's agents when Prudential was demutualizing. By throwing their bias claims into a top-secret alternative dispute resolution scheme instead of in court, Prudential avoided adverse publicity at that crucial moment.
I read articles from 2008 titled "Prudential, Leeds, Morelli & Brown Legal Malpractice Back in the News," from 2010 titled, "Plaintiffs Allege Prudential Conspired with their Lawyers Try to Pierce Privilege." I read a Forbes article focusing on similar issues of corporate fraud and legal malpractice regarding the same law firm and Nextel. This article, published in Forbes in 2011, also reported on a story in the ABA Journal, which described how ex-employees of Prudential were suing Leeds, Morelli & Brown for allegedly accepting $5 million in fees from our company to steer its clients to arbitration in 2010 rather than go to trial.
According to one story, quote, "The law firm of Leeds, Morelli & Brown has recently been embroiled in controversy over episodes in which it has settled batches of employment discrimination claims while contemporaneously entering agreements in which the defendants agree to hire it, the Leeds, Morelli & Brown firm, for substantial sums." An African American woman who was once a vice president at Prudential Insurance and then sued the company for racial bias as a Leeds, Morelli & Brown client, quote, "is asking a federal judge to set aside an arbitration award alleging her lawyers were given improper financial inducement to keep her claim and hundreds of others out of court." According to Linda Guyden, the company paid, that's Prudential, paid $5 million to the law firm representing her and 358 other employees, in return for which Prudential's total exposure was capped at $10 million and the claims were kept secret.
As you know, an outraged judge agreed with Ms. Guyden and set aside the arbitration award, which cheated so many of Prudential's former loyal employees. To bring this outrageous story up to the present, in the fall of 2012, it was revealed through discovery that Prudential Securities allowed Leeds, Morelli & Brown to double-dip. After being paid in full, the law firm improperly converted its clients' funds by taking a deduction of a third of the clients' awards. Thus, it appears these plaintiffs have sadly been cheated again out of millions of dollars. The African American employees who were first victimized by Prudential Securities' variation of the Leeds, Morelli & Brown scheme were then victimized again when PSI let the law firm put another one-third of awards in the lawyers' pockets. Mr. Strangfeld, you were president of Prudential Securities in 2000 and 2001 while this sleazy scheme all happened.
Mr. Grier, you were in charge of the finances of Prudential in 1999 to 2002, as well as the demutualization project. Now that it has just been disclosed, what are you, Mark Grier, and the board going to do to rectify this grave, egregious injustice? Thank you.
Thank you.
Excuse me, Ray. Can you give your name for the record, please?
Oh, yeah. My name is Ray Rogers. I'm a shareholder in Prudential and have had a policy since I was 15 years old, which was 15 from 69 is what? 54 years ago. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for being a customer of Prudential. Clearly, you're referring to something that's in the midst of a legal process. I think it'd be inappropriate for me to comment any more than that on the specific case. I appreciate your comments. Any other questions or comments on the first item of business? Our second item of business is management's proposal to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as independent auditor for 2013. The board of directors recommends that shareholders vote for ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as our independent registered public accounting firm for 2013. Are there any questions or comments on this item? Yes, ma'am.
Ma'am, may I remain seated?
Certainly.
Thank you.
Could you identify yourself, please?
Yes. My name is Evelyn O'Donnell, O-D-O-N-N-E-L-L. You heard Mr. Ray Rogers talk about the Lawrence Lederman and the Prudential security matters. In addition to the injustice being done to the former employees, those cases signal a serious failure of the financial oversight and possible SEC reporting violations that occurred on our auditor's watch. Here's what I learned by looking at the financial reporting on those cases. The company's Form 10-Ks for the fiscal years 2002 through 2005 failed to make any mention at all of the Lawrence Lederman case, despite its filing in 2002. The company's Form 10-Ks for 2007 through 2012 favorably events but omitted events that's unfavorable to the company, such as the fact that the court allowed the new claims for interference with rights under the law against discrimination. The court refused to dismiss the civil racketeering charge against Prudential and Leeds, Morelli & Brown.
On November 15th, 2010, immediately before Prudential had a significant public offering, Prudential lawyers persuaded the trial judge to enter an order declaring that the Lawrence Lederman case had been settled. On November 11th, 2010, several days before the judge erroneously made his order, the company and its underwriters were pricing shares of the company stock for issuance to the public. The $970 million proceeds that would purchase the two AIG subsidiaries from AIG, I'm sorry, those companies would be subsidized by that $970 million. The company's Form 10-K for 2010 inaccurately describes the case as having been settled in principle. Really, it was just an offer to settle, which the clients had to approve, and 42 of those clients did not. The next year, the company's 10-K for 2011 included a statement that the remaining 42 plaintiffs have filed offers of judgment totaling approximately $90 million.
I'll just interject that once again, this was after the public offering. Later, the offers of judgment expired and the remaining plaintiffs filed a statement of damages seeking $3.56 billion. That's billion with a B, folks. Why did the auditors allow Prudential to fail to report the Lawrence Lederman case for five full years? Why did the auditors allow Prudential to submit a false and misleading statement that the case had settled in principle when the case had not? I nosed around a little bit, and I think I have a possible answer buried in the discovery of the Lawrence Lederman case. The lawyers who got Prudential and Prudential Securities in trouble by doing business with Leeds, Morelli & Brown have become the litigation control group, and every one of them is a lawyer who works for Prudential. There's not a single business person.
There's not a single person who's financially oriented. They're only lawyers who are defendants in the Lederman case or the Prudential Securities matter. Those eight people that serve are Susan Blount. Excuse me if I have their positions or their titles not up to par. I'm sure that they've managed to go further in the company than what I might suggest here. Susan Blount, Senior Vice President, General Counsel. John Strangfeld, former Senior Vice President, General Counsel. John Strangfeld, former Senior Vice President, General Counsel. Ann Kappler, Vice President, Corporate Counsel, Corporate Legal Functions. Leonard Novello, former Vice President, Corporate Counsel, Chief Litigation Officer. Susan Santillo-DelGrosso, pardon me for mispronouncing, former Vice President, Corporate Counsel, Chief Legal Officer. Eric Schwimmer, Vice President, Corporate Counsel, Chief Legal Officer, Human Resources. Julia Hennecke Rigby, Corporate Counsel, Chief Legal Officer, Employment and Labor.
Number 8 and final would be Mark Faba, Vice President, Corporate Counsel, Employment and Labor. Here's a possible example of how a flawed accountability could play out. Sheila Davidson was a Prudential lawyer, and while doing her job, she discovered that Leeds, Morelli & Brown was double-dipping. It's obviously taking fees from their clients, even though PSI had already paid them in full. She said that she was shocked and outraged. She reported this to her superiors, nothing happened. Does this show how the litigation control group actually works? After Enron, the new Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that the board's audit committee and the CFO work together to put into place internal controls over possible conflicts of interest. Here, if the allegations of the lawyers' misconduct are true, the financial structure in place may be controlled by the colleagues of the wrongdoers.
Making matters worse, this lack of independent judgment may be wasting Prudential's financial resources and impairing its reputation. I know that the things that I've brought up, my questions are going to take some research. I would ask, I request that I get some answers in writing. If I could have an approximate date when I could expect those answers, please.
Thank you for expressing your views, Ms. O'Donnell. As I indicated before, it's not our practice to discuss a legal matter in the process that it's in.
This is about the auditor here, I mean.
Well,
the regional settlement. I'm concerned about how the auditors did not oversee the situation correctly and are about to be reappointed.
Thank you for those thoughts.
Would I be able to get an answer on where I might go with that?
I would suggest you speak to our general counsel, Susan Blount, after the event.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome. Our third item of business is management's proposal regarding an advisory vote on executive compensation. The board of directors recommends the shareholders vote for this resolution. Are there any questions or comments on this item? Our fourth item of business is a shareholder proposal submitted by Mr. John Chevedden. The proposal calls for permitting written consent by shareholders entitled to cast the minimum number of votes necessary to authorize the action at a meeting at which all shareholders entitled to vote were present and voting. Here to present the proposal on Mr. Chevedden's behalf is Mr. Christian Soto.
Good afternoon, Mr. President and fellow shareholders. My name is Christian Soto, and I'm here to represent Mr. John Chevedden of Redondo Beach, California. He has sponsored Proposal 4, the right to act by written consent. Result, shareholders request that our board of directors undertake such steps as may be necessary to permit written consent by shareholders entitled to cast the minimum number of votes that would be necessary to authorize the action at a meeting at which shareholders entitled to vote thereon were present and voting. This written consent includes all issues that shareholders may propose. This written consent is to be consistent with giving shareholders the fullest power to act by written consent in accordance with applicable law. The shareholders of Wet Seal successfully used written consent to elect better qualified directors in October 2012.
This proposal topic won majority shareholder support at 13 major companies in a single year. This included 67% support at both Allstate and Sprint. Hundreds of major companies enable shareholder action by written consent. Please vote to protect shareholder value. Proposal 4: Right to act by written consent. Thank you.
Thank you. The board of directors recommends the shareholders vote against this proposal for the reasons fully outlined in the 2013 proxy statement. All the items of business for which we've received proper notice have now been presented. If you have not voted by proxy or you wish to change your vote, please complete the ballot on the reverse side of today's meeting agenda and raise your hand. Someone will be through the audience to collect your vote shortly. I now declare the polls closed, and I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss Prudential's performance over the course of the past year. Our goal is to produce operating results that is demonstrably better than our peers, to attain it and to sustain it.
We believe this is possible, this is achievable by virtue of our superior mix of businesses, the quality of the businesses that make up that mix, strong financial management, and our talent. I'm pleased to report that we are making significant progress towards the attainment of our goals. I would characterize 2012 as a year with multiple aspects. From an earnings point of view, it was a good but not great year. Earnings were up, but frankly, not as much as we expected. On the other hand, what exceeded our expectation was unusually strong progress in terms of the building blocks for future performance.
I'm talking about strong organic growth in most of our lines of business, robust fundamentals, sales, flows, which are strong leading indicators, continued progress on the integration of our Star and Edison acquisition with our Gibraltar business in Japan, landmark pension risk transfer transactions with General Motors and Verizon, and the acquisition of Hartford Life. All of these elements are building blocks for 2013 and beyond, that really came through to a strong start in the first quarter of 2013. This progress also gave us the confidence to raise our dividend to its highest ever level, and we're feeling very confident about that. Now, what I'd like to do is just briefly highlight a couple of items. Our business will continue to demonstrate strong fundamentals, robust sales, market momentum. I'll highlight two examples. First, in 2012, our international insurance business achieved record-setting sales of nearly $4 billion.
Second, our worldwide assets under management now exceed $1 trillion. It's an impressive milestone, and it underscores our clients' confidence in Prudential. Beyond the strong growth of our existing businesses, we continue to deploy our talent and our financial strength in new and innovative ways that remain true to our core mission. Last year is a great example where we announced three transactions that strengthened our domestic retirement and life insurance operations. First, in November, we closed the landmark pension risk transfer agreement with General Motors. Through this transaction, which is the largest of its kind in the U.S., we assumed responsibility for pension obligations for more than 110,000 GM retirees. In December, we completed another sizable pension risk transfer agreement with Verizon Communications. Together, these transactions transferred more than $33 billion in account values to Prudential.
We also expanded our domestic life operation with our acquisition of the U.S. business of Hartford Life. Through this transaction, we gained scale, distribution strength, and talent. We are also seeing the anticipated benefits from our acquisition in 2010 of the Star and Edison businesses in Japan. We are proud of all these transactions and when combined with the performance of our existing businesses, they have provided the base that produces the strong results you see visible in the first quarter of 2013. Looking forward, we have set ambitious goals for ourselves, and we are determined to achieve them. As we first outlined in 2010, our goal is to deliver a 13% return on equity in 2013. The first quarter reflected strong progress towards achieving that goal, and we believe that the attainment and sustainment of this performance will set us apart from others in the marketplace.
That said, it's not just about the numbers. We remain committed to the principles that continue to drive our success: quality control ahead of operating results, financial strength as an imperative, and the combination of our talent, culture, teamwork, and diversity as the single most important driver of our long-term success. We're proud of our performance in 2012 and the promising start to 2013. We believe we have good reason to feel confident about our future. We hope you share our confidence, and I thank you, our fellow shareholders, for your continued interest in Prudential, for joining us here today, and for providing input throughout the year. Now I'll open up the floor to any questions. I just ask that if there are questions, please raise your hand and one of our microphone handlers will find you.
In order to accommodate as many shareholders as possible, we request that all comments and questions be presented in a brief and concise manner. If time permits, shareholders desiring to speak a second time may do so, but only after all other waiting shareholders are had a turn. Questions, please. Yes.
Good afternoon, Mr. Strangfeld. My name is Jim White, a shareholder and policyholder. Last year, I came before you to thank you and congratulate you on a fantastic underwriting process that Prudential took that helped me improve my own health. Thank you for that. I'd like to pay tribute to Charlie Lowrey and his group, Bill Barrett, Mike Perretti, the operations people. My company, JJ White, does all different kind of contracting services. You had a six-inch water leak at your Welsh Road facility in Dresher. That was January 11th. The 12th and the 13th, your facilities people, through Cushman & Wakefield and Phil Venturino and Jim Hall, stayed with the work all through the weekend.
We do a lot of emergency work, I was very impressed with the honor, the commitment, the perseverance, and the professionalism while a lot of your people, Charlie Lowrey's people, Bill Barrett, Mike Perretti's people, worked on very little sleep. Tip of the hat to Charlie and his organization for great professionalism and dedication. Thank you also for your GI Jobs support. My company is involved with American Jobs for America's Heroes, I thank you and commend you for your support for GI Jobs. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Mr. White. We appreciate your comments. Other questions? Yes.
Philip Berman, portfolio manager and shareholder. Some questions and comments together. Now that we've entered the fast phase of the bull market that started in 2009, we are now within record price of Prudential stock. We are now able to make a new yearly high and perhaps go even beyond that in 2013. Now some questions. Are the insurance businesses acquired from AIG two years ago still highly accretive, or has that effect plateaued?
Those businesses are performing very well. They're on track with our expectations and may do, in fact, a bit better.
Does launching of the new novel network TV ad campaign with the blue dots mean that you will no longer be having directors retire at a certain age?
There is no correlation between our advertising strategy and our retirement strategies for directors.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comments. Yes. Yes, sir.
Hello, I am Guy Griffith. I am a stockholder. I have been very interested. I came here today because I am very upset about the long-term care rate increase because I do not think I have been an underwriter for 40 years. Started across the street in New York Life Building doing rating for the Fire Rating Bureau of New Jersey. Was there. Had a friend who was sitting right next to me who helped set up PruCo, the casualty company. I looked at this policy, and I have seen the rate increases put through not by just this company, but by all sorts of companies trying to allege that they have the right to do so as a class rate change.
They haven't done a class rate change, they have done a base rate change, which the policy does not allow. Effectively, they have gone back on standing contracts that were written decades ago, and they have just changed the terms of those contracts unilaterally in favor of the insurance company, thereby transferring the risk-bearing from the underwriters and from these stockholders here to the policyholders. In order to improve the loss ratios of those policies, we have just gone around and, after the fact, hiked their premiums. These policies are very expensive. Very few people can afford them. They are $4,000 a year. They get very expensive for people when they retire, and the problem becomes one of lapses. If you read the terms of the policy, if you lapse the policy, you get almost nothing.
You can invest $50,000, $60,000 in them, and you wind up with nothing except maybe a couple of weeks of benefits if they lapse. When you push up the price, one of the reviews in the Nursing Home Association, the legal association in N.Y., was very interesting to me, is that very few families can buy these. If we're pushing people to lapse their policies and we are taking down maybe $100,000 in IBNR for each one of those policies, we're stealing from these policyholders. It gets worse, too, when you realize that in N.Y., the State of New York allows great tax credits for these things.
All of a sudden, the State of New York's taxpayers giving you tax credits so the State of New York, which pays 75% of all nursing home care in that state, will have at least some people paying their way. They give a tax credit, but if we hike the premium up so high that people have to give them up because the premium goes from $4,000 a year to $8,000 a year, and their incomes went down from $70,000 a year to $20,000, we're forcing people to lapse their policies. I wrote letters to Malcolm Chung, I got no reply. I wrote letters to Karen Smith, I got no reply.
When I get no reply, I follow the old German adage. They say, "Please sue Prudential." If you do not reply to somebody when they send you a challenge on an underwriting matter and a policyholder's matter, I can read this stuff as well as anybody at state or anybody else. I can read this stuff. If you don't reply, you're asking for lawsuits. I saw your attitude to lawsuits before. These guys challenge you on one thing, you said, oh, even though you work for those guys, you say, "I can't comment because I must obey the lawyer." It's a good way out, but it doesn't make them happy. The other thing is, it may not get you into trouble, and that's probably wise. I don't suggest that you see chairman of the organization do anything that isn't wise.
I really would like some sort of answers from these folks. Maybe it's Ms. Blount I talk to. Maybe because I've just seen you talk about her. I do want an answer on this because I don't want to do a class action thing here because why give billions and billions, or why give our dividend money to lawyers for the next 4 years? The thing is, it is a nasty issue. It is a moral issue. It's an issue that as a lifelong insurance person, it's upset me because when I quote somebody a price, I stick with it no matter what. My tradition is loans of money. You sell your damn house to pay your losses. You do whatever. We were unlimited up until recently, and we took this business seriously. This kind of cynicism is uncalled for.
You have all these nice people there working on your board and lots of fine people working as your executives. You should go home thinking you've done something good for the world as well as made your paycheck. I'm concerned about this thing, and I want somebody to deal with me on it because I think there's much. You can, I think, 500 ways to fix the problem other than what they've done. I'd just like to make that call and my comment now because I could be going on and on. I would like to talk to Ms. Blount because I will take this matter to the wall because that's the kind of lunatic idiot that I am. I do hope we can find something that's more reasonable in the meantime.
It's very nice to talk to you and very nice to see you, and I'm going to vote for you and all the other directors because I'm probably doing the best you can.
Thank you for your thoughts, and we'll be pleased to have one of our colleagues speak with you afterwards about finding an opportunity to speak. Are there any other questions or comments that people would like to make?
Hello, Mr. Strangfeld. I am Francis Godfrey from New York City. In light of the earlier comments about the auditing system, again, I ask the question from last year, why in the light of this new information that we're getting, we temporarily change the auditors in order to, if for lack of a better word, I would say, bring in fresh thinking so that all these double-dipping accusations could be resolved. If it's coming from the auditors, that means you're having a problem with an auditor. All I ask is that the board considers this, or if worse comes to worse, that my fellow shareholders make this a new proposal for our next meeting. Thank you, sir.
Thank you for your comments. We have time for one more. Yes. Question over here.
Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is John Zimmerman. I'm a stockholder, as everybody else is here. I asked a question about Prudential moving up the street here on Broad Street, building a new building. Is that because the corporation is expanding or they're going to rent the place, the offices out, or whether people from here are going to move up there? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. Well, it's really a combination of factors. We are expanding and growing in New Jersey and in Newark in particular. We are also consolidating offices from rented facilities that we have had in the Gateway Center to a single, more efficient and more effective utilization of space down the street as well. We're very pleased and proud to be expanding our presence in Newark and assuming a leadership role in the community as well. One final question. Yes, ma'am?
Thank you for taking my question. Mr. Strangfeld, you said that you were kind enough to suggest Mrs. Blount to me. I believe she's with the litigation portion. I'm really interested in maybe the audit committee or the CFO. I'm not sure that Mrs. Blount is the person that would be able to help me in terms of the auditing question.
Okay, well, I would suggest you speak with her, and you and she can figure out who'd be the appropriate people for you to speak with.
I just assumed you would know. Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. This concludes the question and answer portion of the meeting. Peggy?
The preliminary results, based on the voting of shares represented by valid proxy and ballots tabulated, show that the board's slate of director nominees has been approved, with each director nominee having received a majority of the votes cast. The ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm has been approved with 318,626,902 votes in favor, or approximately 98.89% of the votes cast. Management's resolution to provide our shareholders with the right to cast a non-binding advisory vote on our executive compensation programs and policies has been approved with 224,639,229 votes in favor, or approximately 77.72% of the votes cast.
The shareholder proposal requesting to permit written consent by shareholders entitled to cast the minimum number of votes that would be necessary to authorize the action at a meeting at which all shareholders entitled to vote thereon were present and voting has not been approved, with 209,332,795 votes against, representing 72.91% of the votes. That concludes the report of preliminary voting results. The final results will be certified by the Inspector of Elections, and this information will be posted both on our website and reported in a Form 8-K. Shareholders may also obtain results by writing to my office.
Thank you, Peggy. The business of the meeting is now concluded. We thank you for your continued interest and support. The meeting is now adjourned.