CREF will be including a statement in opposition to the Proposal, along with their recommendation that participants vote AGAINST the Proposal. That is their right, and I'm not going to put their statement onto this website until it is released publicly (in the Proxy Statement.)
Suffice it to say, CREF's opposing statement is accurate and fair. However, it puts up a mist of fog in an effort to suggest that the Proposal is ill-advised.
They suggest that it is speculative, which is perfectly true. I'm trying to head them off at the pass!
They suggest that it is a burden on CREF. The whole point of the Proposal is to place a burden on CREF if they try to change their form of incorporation, because the participants (we) don't have the resources that they do. I'm content to (speculatively) pay the Expense Ratio necessary to conduct an election on such a change. But note that the Proposal does not compel CREF to do anything. Even if the Proposal is adopten, it only requests an election.
The fact that no similar "conversions" have taken place in recent years does not relate to the wisdom of regulating such an event in the future. It's very much an opinion, but I feel that enfolding Nuveen into our company is a step away from a long, Not-For-Profit tradition, if not a corporate conversion.
It's not entirely appropriate to compare the fight to include a Proposal in a Proxy Statement with the more ... refined ... language used in the Proxy Statement itself. But it may be helpful to refer back to CREF's original efforts to block my Proposal in 2005. They argued to the SEC that:
... CREF is not organized as a mutual insurance company. ...