By Dean Seal
Comcast shareholders have voted against a proposal to curb Chairman and Chief Executive Brian Roberts's power by installing an independent chair on the company's board.
The National Legal and Policy Center, a stock-owning conservative think tank, previously floated the pitch to have the board chaired by an independent director. President Trump regularly criticizes NBC and MSNBC, which are owned by Comcast, and has repeatedly lashed out at Roberts personally.
The media and telecommunications conglomerate said Wednesday that the independent chair policy was one of two shareholder proposals voted down during Comcast's 2025 annual shareholder meeting that morning.
Shareholders also rejected a proposal to consider CEO pay ratio, or the ratio of the chief executive's compensation to the median compensation of other employees, in executive compensation.
In its independent chair proposal, the National Legal and Policy Center said that occupying both the chair and CEO roles infuses Roberts with "an inordinate amount of insufficiently checked power."
The think tank accused Roberts of showing questionable leadership and allowing Comcast's financial performance and share price to falter. "We are certain that he won't do the honorable thing and take the company private at a fair price to shareholders, so the next-best thing is a vote to show that his inordinate power compared to his equity is wholly inappropriate and ineffective," the group said.
Also Wednesday, Comcast shareholders elected all of the company's director nominees into one-year terms, ratified its independent auditor and approved the company's executive compensation proposal.
Write to Dean Seal at dean.seal@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 18, 2025 11:14 ET (15:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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