Move of Halliburton Meeting Draws Fire (hiding from shareholders?)

NYT/AP: Move of Halliburton Meeting Draws Fire
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 14, 2006

DUNCAN, Okla. (AP) -- Halliburton earned a record $2.4 billion last year, but Houston executives will forgo Texas-sized luxury when they come to this rural Oklahoma county seat this week.

Shareholders, who have gathered for the company's annual meeting since 2003 at Houston's lavish Four Seasons Hotel, will meet Wednesday in the modern, but far humbler setting of Duncan's convention center. Those staying the night can choose the Holiday Inn, with rooms opening onto the parking lot, and the Chisholm Suites Hotel, which takes its name for the cattle trail that once passed here.

Halliburton Co. says it moved its meeting to this company town of 22,500 to honor its southern Oklahoma roots. The company's critics accuse it of running to a prairie outpost to hide.

''They're relocating to a city where they don't actually have to be accountable to their own shareholders,'' said Maureen Haver, spokeswoman for the Houston Global Awareness Collective and one of 15 protesters arrested at Halliburton's meeting last year. ''They're going to a town they have in their pocket.''

The oilfield services conglomerate is not alone in taking big business to middle America's smaller places....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Big-Biz-Small-Town.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

the "Corpus Corruptus" send the same message. "We are not accountable to the little people."

Kinda like a 'universary Pretzeldent".