The AFL-CIO, the largest labor union, has sent a letter to the boards of six companies asking for the resignation of Fannie Mae’s former Chairman and CEO, James A. Johnson, including two companies that are under investigation for the timing of their stock-option grants, UnitedHealth Group Inc. and KB Home. The AFL-CIO is asking the boards to oust Johnson as a director after he became “a central focus” of the investigations by the Justice Department and the SEC into stock-option backdating. The letter notes that the record of the former Chairman and CEO “is replete with compensation abuses that collectively are an unacceptable record for a director of a public company.”
With this type of reputation, it is hard to believe that he still serves on at least five compensation committees of major public companies such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Target Corp. Also, Johnson heads UnitedHealth’s compensation and human resource committees and ironically was appointed to a special committee to specifically investigate backdating of $1.8 million stock options to its former Chairman.
Click here for the Bloomberg article.
Comments