Presbyterians Lead Proxy Fight Over Gulf Involvement in Angola

Criticizing the Gulf Oil Corporation's involvement in the Portuguese colony of Angola, the United Presbyterian Church has introduced four proposals on the Gulf proxy statement.

With 671.187 shares worth $15,437,301, Harvard is the largest university shareholder in Gulf, owning .25 per cent of the Corporation.

Corporate Responsibility

The Gulf Angola Project, sponsored by the Project on Corporate Responsibility-which also handles Campaign GM-is soliciting proxies for the United Presbyterian Church.

According to Steven A. Bookshester, a coordinator of the drive, the Project will concentrate on large institutional shareholders. The Project has already written to 600 universities, ten banks and several mutual funds.

Lone College

So far only one college-Wayne State University in Detroit-has committed its proxies to the Project. Wayne State owns 630 shares of Gulf. It will vote for two of the Project's four proposals.

The four Gulf Angola Project proposals would:

establish a committee to study Gulf's involvement in Portuguese Africa;

require disclosure of Gulf's charitable gifts;

enlarge the Board of Directors from a minimum of five to a minimum of 25, empower shareholders rather than Directors to increase the size of the Board, and provide that ten of the 25 Directors need not be shareholders:

forbid Gulf to maintain investments in colonial areas.

In the proxy statement the Gulf Oil Corporation has recommended that shareholders vote against the four resolutions at the annual meeting on April 27.

Silence

A spokesman for Gulf said he could not discuss the proposals because of Securities Exchange Commission regulations against proxy solicitation.

Bookshester said he expects that some institutions will, like Wayne State, approve only the first two proposals.

"If they're looking at it from the viewpoint of corporate responsibility, they would approve all of them." Bookshester said. "If they're looking as an institutional investor, they might have some difficulty with 3 and 4, but from a business point of view alone, 1 and 2 seem good."

Revolutionary Fight

Revolutionary groups in Angola and Mozambique have been fighting the Portuguese for ten years. According to the Project, Gulf provides Portugal with large tax payments in advance of their due date, a steady supply of badly-needed oil and like all foreign investors in Angola, allocations for the construction of military barracks and payments for the defense of "national property."