New York, NY, Feb. 19--The investment office of the AFL-CIO has been pressing General Electric Co. and Home Depot Inc. to drop Kenneth Langone from their boards since September.
It is now ready to take the fight to the companies' annual meetings, said director Bill Patterson at the Reuters Corporate Reform Summit on Wednesday.
"Langone should not be renominated until he steps forward and tells the story" of how Grasso negotiated his pay package, said Patterson at the summit, which was held at Reuters U.S. headquarters in New York. His AFL-CIO office manages about $400 billion in union-sponsored funds. "We still don't know how he (Grasso) was able to do this."
Langone was seen as a key architect of the $188 million compensation package that led to Grasso's ouster as chairman and chief executive of the exchange.
The AFL-CIO is now in dialogue with GE, and there has been an exchange of letters with Home Depot, said Patterson.
Neither company immediately returned calls for comment.
Langone has been a director at GE since 1999 and sits on the compensation committee. He has been lead director at Home Depot since 1998.
