The 15th time is the charm for Tutor Perini!

My grandmother didn’t learn how to drive until she was in her late 50s. When she finally decided to learn, it took her 10 times! until she finally passed her driving test! I thought about that the other day when I was reading this recent 8-K filed by Tutor Perini, a large construction company here in Los Angeles located up the road from footnoted world headquarters.

That’s because for the past 14 years — ever since Dodd Frank started requiring that shareholders had to vote on the company’s executive compensation plan — shareholders voted against Tutor Perini’s executive compensation. See this post from last May, for example, noting that the vote had failed 14 consecutive times. Of course, as I noted in my post, this was only designed to be an advisory vote, so nothing really changed. Shareholders just kept rejecting the compensation package year after year! Last year, the vote was particularly lopsided with 12.9 million votes in favor and 28.3 million opposed, as disclosed in this 8-K.

But this year — just like my grandma finally passing her driving test on her 10th try — was the charm! For the first time since 2011, shareholders overwhelmingly approved the company’s executive compensation plan with a vote of 38.6 million in favor and only 952,357 opposed.

The company never provided any commentary on all of those failed votes over the years and they haven’t seemed to declare a victory lap on this vote passing, based on what I’ve seen.

Sometimes, things just take a lot of time!