Reuters: Regulatory News: UPDATE 1-CME annual meeting disrupted by activist shareholders

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UPDATE 1-CME annual meeting disrupted by activist shareholders May 23rd 2012, 21:28 Wed May 23, 2012 5:28pm EDT By Ann Saphir and Tom Polansek CHICAGO May 23 (Reuters) - CME Group's annual shareholder meeting ground to a halt on Wednesday as activist shareholders shouted for the exchange operator to pay its "fair share" of taxes. CME security guards forcibly removed shouting and clapping demonstrators from the meeting in its Chicago headquarters. CME's Executive Chairman and President Terry Duffy resumed the meeting after the disruption, but chants from a crowd of demonstrators in the street outside the meeting could still be heard inside. The demonstrators were protesting a move last year by the Illinois legislature to cut about $85 million from CME's annual tax bill by 2014 after the exchange operator threatened to move out of state. The demonstrators said the tax breaks would lead to cuts in Illinois social services, such as home health care. Illinois legislators are facing a May 31 deadline to craft a deal to plug the state's chronic budget deficit. The Rev. Jason Coulter of Ravenswood United Church of Christ in Chicago asked CME to return the money "to people who so desperately need it" in Illinois. "To whom much is given, much is expected," he said. "Much has been given to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange by the State of Illinois." Chicago police arrested 15 people protesting the tax breaks outside CME's Chicago Board of Trade building on Wednesday morning. Duffy addressed the protesters at the outset of the meeting, saying the company had been taxed at an unfair rate based on an "out-of-date assumption" that all of its business was conducted in Illinois. CME is a clearinghouse for trades from around the world. "There is a perception that we got a tax break," Duffy said. "This is not true." Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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