California Retirement System to Push Broader Ownership

California's vast public employee and teacher retirement systems, CalPERS and CalSTRS, have agreed to a new options policy for their investments in the 1,000 largest public companies. Under the policy, the systems will oppose new option grants that give more than 5% of the equity to the top five executives. State Treasurer Phil Angelides said a main goal of the program was "to encourage corporations to offer broad-based equity compensation plans for all their employees." Given the clout of these systems, and the leadership role they have taken among institutional investors, the new policy could have significant ramifications.