Friday brings the much-anticipated resolution of one of the more interesting and genuinely headline-generating issues to hit the not-especially thrill-a-minute world of pensions: the Wal-Mart voting blockade.

As you may remember, two particularly weighty pension systems, the consolidated New York City employees, teachers, police and fire pension groups and the California State Teachers' Retirement system, just happen to hold considerable Wal-Mart stock as part of their holdings – 4.7 million and 5.3 million shares, respectively, though each of those numbers is still less than 1 percent of the company's total shares.

A New York Times article a month ago created a serious credibility issue for the mega-retailer when it revealed that the company had long known about alleged, widespread bribery in its Mexican operations, but had kept its own internal investigation into the issue on the down-low.