Earlier this month, Mr. Fresco won a temporary lease on life when the Fiat board thwarted an effort to unseat him.
Still, the urge to seclude oneself can get a president in trouble, as Mr. Obama discovered last year when the authorities thwarted an effort by a Nigerian man to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.
MOSCOW — In a battle of Russian oligarchs, shareholders voted on Thursday to retain the current board at Norilsk Nickel, thwarting an effort by a minority owner to gain more seats and oust the management.
On Monday, allied warships thwarted an effort by Qaddafi loyalists to use small inflatable boats packed with high explosives to threaten ships carrying relief supplies to the contested port city of Misurata, 130 miles east of Tripoli, the capital.
Last year, the only billion-dollar company to have a contested election was the Oshkosh Corporation, which successfully thwarted an effort by the activist investor Carl C. Icahn to get directors on the board.
"I am for moving to a popular electoral system, but it's not going to happen," Senator Charles E. Schumer said yesterday, noting that the Senate thwarted an effort to abolish the Electoral College in 1969.
The deal, which left Vale do Rio Doce and Mitsui each with 50percentt of the miner, thwarted an effort by the Australian miner BHP Ltd. to buy a controlling stake in Caemi, the world's fourth-largest iron mining company.
Mr. Lancman says his most notable credential is the role he played, as a member of the Queens Hospital Center directors, in thwarting an effort by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to privatize the public hospital.
But as finance minister in 2004 he irked the Germans by helping a French drug firm to take over a Franco-German rival, as well as thwarting an effort by another German company, Siemens, to buy bits of Alstom, a French engineering group.
