CORPORATE INTEGRITY PROJECT
NLPC promotes integrity in corporate governance, including honesty and fair play in relationships with shareholders, employees, business partners, and customers. In doing so, NLPC places special emphasis on the following:
- Asserting that the social responsibility of the corporation is to defend and advance the interests of the people who own the company, the shareholders. True responsibility is fidelity to one’s own mission, not someone else’s or someone else’s political agenda.
- Exposing the seeking of influence on public officials by corporations, which is the inevitable result of high levels of government spending and intervention in the marketplace.
- Combating practices that undermine the free enterprise system, including corporate giving to groups hostile to a free economy.
#WeToldYouSo: California’s Investment in Recycling is a Massive Failure
California fancies itself the nation's conscience on plastic packaging. It passed a sweeping law. It set ambitious targets. It lectured companies, pressured suppliers, and demanded a cleaner, greener, circular future. And now the results are in — or, more precisely,...
Exxon’s Darren Woods: Big Oil’s Biggest Carbon Regulation Advocate
In our first post in this series, we documented how ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods spent years lobbying to preserve the Paris Agreement — the policy architecture that justified the company's multi-billion-dollar low-carbon investment program. In our second...
Financial Planning Site Covers NLPC’s Criticisms of SEC Under Atkins
On Friday, Financial Planning, a news publication that caters to wealth management professionals, reported how NLPC --- after winning several anti-DEI concessions from companies including American Express, Deere & Company, and Goldman Sachs --- has become critical...
Wells Fargo’s Board Wrongly Gave Scharf the Keys to His Own Oversight
When Wells Fargo's board handed CEO Charles Scharf (pictured above) the chairmanship in October 2025 — and then revealed his compensation had surged to $94.52 million — it offered shareholders a vivid illustration of what happens when no independent check exists on...
Selective Neutrality: Why Did Oreo Scrub a U.S. Gold Medal Hockey Hero?
In the high-stakes world of corporate branding, "consistency" is usually the gold standard. But for Mondelez International, the parent company of the iconic Oreo brand, consistency seems to have been replaced by a reactionary and ideologically driven "cancel culture."...
Confirmed: Microsoft’s Reid Hoffman Not ‘Cleared’ of Wrongdoing by Justice Dept.
A couple of weeks ago when we asserted that the walls were closing in on Reid Hoffman's and Microsoft's ability to keep him on the tech giant's board of directors, due to (among other things) the LinkedIn co-founder's Trump Derangement Syndrome and evasions about his...
NLPC Calls for Disney to Embrace Board Reform, Reject Woke Capture
Today, National Legal and Policy Center presented a “Request for Cumulative Voting for Board Elections” proposal, at Disney's 2026 annual shareholder meeting. This is the first of several cumulative voting proposals that NLPC will present this proxy season. This is...
Coca-Cola and Disney Play the Shareholder Deception Game Again
In the world of Corporate America and engagement and communication with shareholders who bring proposals for annual meetings, some companies are sleazier and more adversarial than others. In NLPC's experience, two of the biggest offenders on this count are also two of...
Coca-Cola Plastics Failures: NLPC Demands Independent Audit for 2026
National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) is calling on shareholders of The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) to support a critical governance reform at the upcoming 2026 Annual Meeting. Identified as Item 5 on page 91 of the Company's 2026 Proxy Statement, the proposal...
Microsoft’s Board Committee Charter Should Get Reid Hoffman Removed from Building
Reid Hoffman is not exactly burdened with board responsibilities at Microsoft. While his fellow directors hold assignments on the Audit, Compensation, and Governance and Nominating committees — the bodies that perform the actual, unglamorous work of institutional...
Exxon’s Taxpayer-Funded Carbon Empire; Now Darren Woods Wants Mandates
In our last post about ExxonMobil, we described how Chairman and CEO Darren Woods overcorrected in response to the 2021 Engine No. 1 board insurgency, steering the company into a multi-billion-dollar low-carbon investment program built on the assumption that the Biden...
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge Hits ‘Hard Times’
It looks like my instincts were right. Now even the New York Times is taking a critical look at the so-called Giving Pledge, administered by the Gates Foundation, whereby billionaires promise to give away their fortunes. Written by Theodore Schleifer, the Times...
Epstein Revelations Further Reveal Depravity That Infects Big Tech Leadership
A more in-depth look at the massive release of Jeffrey Epstein documents by CNN, published today, focuses on the activities and events that occurred on his private island, and further reveals the culture of depravity and willful blindness regarding his abuse of young...
Does Reid Hoffman Have an Undisclosed Conflict of Interest in Microsoft’s Anthropic Defense?
When Microsoft stepped into one of the most consequential legal battles in the history of American artificial intelligence this week, it did so without disclosing something its own shareholders arguably have a right to know. On Monday, Microsoft filed an amicus brief...
Governance Media Site Says NLPC ‘Increasingly Visible in High-Profile’ Corporate Battles
Recently Governance Intelligence, a U.K.-based website that focuses on news and trends for an audience made up heavily of corporate secretaries and governance professionals, interviewed NLPC's Paul Chesser, director of our Corporate Integrity Project, about his...
Exxon’s Darren Woods Has a Paris Problem
NLPC has filed a shareholder proposal ahead of ExxonMobil's 2026 annual meeting with a simple request: make the Chairman and CEO two different people. It is among the most basic reforms in corporate governance, already in place at a clear majority of S&P 500...
Walls Close in on Microsoft, Reid Hoffman; Mainstream Media Finally Asks Questions
Incorporating some of what NLPC has already reported related to Reid Hoffman's friendship and correspondence with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Bloomberg has pieced together a more extensive timeline of the relationship from the Justice Department's recent...
Netflix Lost WBD Deal Due to 99% Donations to Dems, Susan Rice, and Tampons for Men
Should we call him "Tampon Ted?" According to a report this week by New York Post columnist Charles Gasparino, Netflix's months-long, $83 billion bid to acquire the studio and streaming assets of Warner Bros. Discovery collapsed in part because of what Republican...
Reuters Chats w/ NLPC’s Corporate Project Director About DEI, the SEC & Shareholder Activism
Today Reuters posted a 26-minute podcast interview between Sustainable Business Correspondent Ross Kerber and the director of NLPC's Corporate Integrity Project, Paul Chesser (pictured above), in which they discussed the shareholder activism landscape; NLPC's...
Pro-DEI Bloomberg Columnist Distorts NLPC’s Shareholder Activism
On Monday Bloomberg published a commentary by liberal columnist Beth Kowitt (pictured above) that misunderstood and misrepresented NLPC's shareholder initiatives, especially as they pertain to rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion policies at major U.S....
Texas Two-Step: Reid Hoffman and the Rot at Microsoft
The 2026 Texas Senate primary between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico has provided the American public with a rare gift: a look inside the "dark money" vault of Reid Hoffman. Rep. Crockett’s campaign recently issued a blistering news release calling out Talarico...