Wireless America: Opening Remarks

WILLIAM C. THOMPSON, JR., Comptroller of the City of New York

Comptroller Thompson, who manages more than $110 billion in New York City Pension Funds, has been a leader among institutional investors in advancing corporate governance and corporate social responsibility reforms. He recently filed shareholder resolutions on behalf of the Pension Funds calling on Yahoo! and Google to establish policies protecting against the infringement of basic freedoms by countries currently doing business with the Internet search engines.

Thank you and good morning everyone. Let me also start off by thanking and saying good morning to Executive Director Michael Connor and all the staff and supporters of Open MIC for your work to promote and shape a healthy media environment.

It’s a great pleasure that I’m with you this morning at this timely and important forum. We’re in an era of rapid change, and gatherings like this are necessary to exchange ideas, experiences and perspectives about what exactly this change means for all of us. While those opinions may differ, I think we can all agree that technology’s impact on every aspect of our lives is definitely growing. Instead of meeting at school or at Little League, kids are meeting through My Space and Facebook.

Businesses can communicate from all over the world in an instant, and one of the things that I have to admit is just amazing is watching people text each other while sitting a few feet away from each other. It is amazing.

In short, technology is redefining how we work, how we learn, how we interact. It’s such an exciting time full of ideas and innovation. However, despite this excitement, we have to take a step back to ensure that the development of our increasingly wireless world is more than just prosperous and cutting edge. It also has to be responsible. Any new era of change brings new challenges, as the power of technology grows, so too do the responsibilities of the media industry. Yet, we’ve all heard about cases where companies have denied their consumers access to certain information.

Open MIC’s recent work to fight against censorship is proof that there’s a troubling trend evolving in the media and technology world. I’m concerned about how this trend affects New York City’s pension funds and the people that they serve.

Just to give you a little background, as Comptroller of the City of New York, I serve as trustee of four of the five pension funds, and Chief Investment Advisor to all five pension funds. Total assets, third quarter of last year—God knows what it’s going to look like these days—is in excess of 110 billion dollars. It makes us the fifth largest institution in public pension funds in this country. Every action and every decision we make affects more than just dollars and cents. It impacts the lives and futures of more than 640,000 retirees, beneficiaries, and active city employees. Every time our funds invest in a company, we’re putting our trust in its management and its board to act responsibly.

When companies compromise on censorship issues, they jeopardize their reputations, their financial bottom-lines, our investments, and the integrity of that media industry. In recent years, we’ve seen a number of companies betray the fundamental ideals of free speech and democracy.

For example, in China, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have self-censored certain websites, so when a person in China searches Tiananmen Square, they’ll be directed only to sites about tourism, travel and other subjects all unrelated to the tragic actions that took place there. As far as we’re concerned, we cannot tolerate censorship.

Accordingly, in 2007 on behalf of our city’s pension funds, we submitted resolutions calling on all three companies to establish a set of policies protecting against the infringement of basic freedoms by countries currently doing business with Internet search engines. They’ve all resisted us so far, but we’ll continue to push for progress. We’ve resubmitted our resolution with Google and Yahoo! in January, and we’re going to resubmit with Microsoft later this year. And, if there’s a proxy battle over Microsoft’s bid to acquire Yahoo!, we may be able to use our leverage as incredibly large shareholders to kind of “make the cases” they would say.

Technology companies doing business both here and abroad need to establish business practices and standards ensuring that universal freedoms are protected. It’s just one of the many measures we’re taking to ensure that the companies we invest in are both fiscally and socially responsible.

Despite criticism from corporations that shareholders mettle too much, and they definitely level that against us in New York City—we’re probably the most active and aggressive public pension funds in America—we have the right to be heard when companies in which we invest act contrary to the ideals we value. It doesn’t mean that we have to sacrifice innovation or progress; we believe that we can have it all.

I, like all of you, am excited about the possibilities of the next frontier of technology. However, in order to fulfill the full promise of the digital age, we have to ensure that the commitment to the principles that Open MIC often talks of—competition, diversity and openness—are as strong as the commitment to developing the next cell phone or laptop.

To make this happen, we have to continue to work together. Positive things happen when investors, business leaders and consumers come together, and I believe and know that today’s dialogue exploring Wireless America will go a long way to promoting both greater understanding and accountability.