Cannabis Proposal Up for Proxy Vote at Eli Lilly Shareholder Meeting in May 2018.
A shareholder proposal to help decriminalize cannabis will be on Eli Lilly’s 2018 proxy and will be up for a vote at the annual shareholder meeting on May 7, 2018.
Fred Pfenninger of Indiana, who owns 79 shares of Eli Lilly common stock, started the process of placing this proposal before the Lilly Board on November 2016 for the 2017 proxy vote. Lilly forwarded the proposal to the SEC under Rule 14a-8 the following month as a no act filing requesting that the SEC deny the proposal from going forward. At that time, Lilly argued that the proposal was not received at their headquarters before the deadline for submitting shareholder proposals. However, the proposal made it to the 2018 Annual shareholders meeting.
The Lilly Board is recommending against the proposal, which appears as Item 7 on the 2018 Proxy Statement. This should lead to an interesting vote in May.
Interesting Facts from the Proposal:
- Lilly was a world leader in cannabis based pharmaceutical products in the early 1900s
- Lilly sold 23 different cannabis items in its medical catalog in 1935
- Eli Lilly, the third president of the company from 1932-1948, did his doctoral dissertation on cannabis in 1907.
- Parke Davis worked with Lilly to create its own strain, Cannabis Americana, which Lilly grew in Greenfield, Indiana.
Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/59478/000005947818000111/proxy2018_def14a.htm