Try Googling "Evelyn Y. Davis" and not finding the word "gadfly" in the same reference. It's nearly impossible. Davis, who died Nov. 4 at 89, was the standard-bearer for the word since the 1960s.
In mythology, a gadfly is a pest that plagued cattle. In the corporate world, it is someone who irritates management until it acts on shareholder concerns. But Davis' needling for boardroom accountability was also mythical.
For decades, the self-proclaimed "Queen of the Corporate Jungle" was a fixture at the annual shareholder summits of giant companies. She maintained investments of at least $2,000 — the threshold to offer resolutions — in 80 to 120 companies at any time. She attended as many as 50 meetings a year, but we're pretty sure it was at car company confabs where she really stood out. Some highlights:
At General Motors' 2005 meeting, Davis told GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, then 73, that he was too long in the tooth to be hip to styling trends. Davis held up a photo of a 1950s-era Russia-built Volga and asked Lutz whether GM might consider such a retro theme. Lutz, who thought she said, "Volvo," replied: "I don't think we'll be making any old Volvos."
"It's a Volga, not a Volvo," Davis said. "You are the problem, Bob. ... You're not with it. You're getting too old." Lutz fired back: "Why don't you take over for me?"
A decade earlier, at the 1995 GM meeting, Davis asked how much Heidi Kunz, GM's treasurer, and other female executives spent on first-class travel. Earlier, Davis said she was concerned that GM was promoting too many women, although just four of its 64 officers were women at the time. "What chance does a man have for promotions at General Motors?" she asked.
Once at a Ford annual meeting, she badgered CEO Henry Ford II for not having a male secretary to answer his phone when she called. At Ford's 1976 meeting, she asked The Deuce, who had recently spent three weeks in the hospital for treatment of angina, how long he planned to serve, in view of his ailment.
"I'm not going to retire before next year's annual meeting, I can assure you," the 59-year-old executive said.
Davis could be influential. In 1990, GM banned paying above-market prices for shares held for less than two years by a major shareholder. Davis had pushed for a resolution banning so-called greenmail since GM paid Ross Perot $743 million for his stock, almost twice the market value, in a 1986 deal to get him off its board.
At the first Chrysler meeting after the DaimlerChrysler merger was announced in 1998, Davis, a Holocaust survivor, repeatedly asked Chrysler CEO Robert Eaton, with her voice cracking: "How could you do this, Bob?"
"Evelyn, believe me, I understand the depth of your feelings," Eaton said. "This was obviously done as a result of the way the company and the world is today, not 50 years ago."
Eaton also appeared at times to be fighting back tears. Davis, who was born in Amsterdam, said she was sent during the war to a concentration camp in the former Czechoslovakia.
In 2008, she bashed Ford for selling Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata Motors, an Indian company. She also told then-CEO Alan Mulally that, although he wasn't a bad-looking guy, "You should go back to Boeing, and we should have my king, Bill Ford, come back and be chairman and CEO again. It's terrible what's going on here."
In 2003, when Bill Ford personally delivered a new Jaguar to Davis, the then-Ford CEO got an enthusiastic smooch — and some ribbing. When he returned to his office in Dearborn, Mich., after a photo of the kiss was published in Automotive News, he found a poster-size photo of the encounter. And then came a letter from GM CEO Rick Wagoner: "This is a really hotly contested market, but this is one sale I'm glad to let you have. By the way, it sure looks like you're having fun in this photo."
Actually, the tradition of CEOs personally delivering a car to Davis started at Ford in 1984 with Chairman Philip Caldwell. But it was also done in the 1990s by Eaton and GM CEO Jack Smith.
"Although her tactics were often outrageous, it was impossible to ignore Evelyn," Bill Ford said in a statement. "And while less-known, her philanthropic efforts were equally impressive and through the years, her foundation donated more than $1 million to support many organizations. I consider Evelyn a friend, and the world has lost a true original."