About Us

 
 
The Lemonjuice.biz community of individual and institutional investors benefits from the analysis of corporate stewardship that affects shareholder value.  The performance of corporate managers and directors, as well as fund’s stewardship of voting rights, affects individuals’ retirement and standard of living much more than the recent quarterly accounting profits. 

Lemonjuice.biz addresses the overall needs for governance improvement in each company by awarding “corporate governance lemons.”  The fewer lemons awarded, the better the company is governed. An award of five juicy lemons means there is a lot to squeeze and value to unlock.  An award of five rotten lemons means that there is no hope. 
 
Unlike proxy advisors, who offer exclusive advisory services to institutional investors, Lemonjuice.biz also provides an open and dynamic forum for all shareholders.  In addition to our views, we seek input from specialists, insiders and the public.

About Our Slogan:
 
Our slogan means “who shall squeeze (or pressure) those guardians?”  It is a parody on the well-known question “quis custodet ipsos custodes?” which means “who shall guard the guardians?” (or “watch the watchers”). This has been the iconic quote used in discussing control and governance.  Papers and books on governance often use this quote to color their point.  It was coined in Latin by a Roman satirist, Juvenal.  He doubted the wisdom of men hiring guardians for their wives.  However, the same question was posed centuries prior by Plato in “The Republic.”  Socrates suggested that city-state guardians can be fooled into guarding themselves with a “noble lie,” assuring that they are better than others.  History, however, proved that this never worked.

Implications:
 
Two thousand years (give or take) after Plato, during the Great Depression, Berle and Means wrote their influential policy book “The Modern Corporation and Private Property. “  The question was essentially the same as that of Plato and Juvenal, and it laid the foundation for the establishment of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934.  Ever since then, the government has been imposing mounting regulations in order to watch the watchers of US public companies.  However, the Government cannot be the sole guardian of private enterprises.  Company owners, the shareholders, are beginning to play an ever more important role in controlling the corporate insiders.  We believe that without the vigilance of the owners, listed companies will become nothing more than extensions of our nation’s bureaucracy.