U could possibly find more evidence that this wasn’t the first attempt by the "Institute of Directors" to get rid off having to face up to shareholders at AGM''s
Shareholder engagement - Has the AGM had its day?
5 October 2012
One of the pillars of the corporate calendar – a companyʼs annual general meeting – is on the brink of being made optional, giving listed companies the opportunity to scrap it.
In response to a request from the Australian Government for advice on the role of the AGM, the Corporations and Markets Advisory Committee has published a discussion paper on The AGM and shareholder engagement (14 September 2012).
But it is the prospect that the AGM may be scrapped that has captured public attention.
Retail v institutional shareholders
While CAMACʼs paper has been welcomed by institutional shareholders and listed company boards, retail shareholders and their representatives are outraged that losing AGMs would potentially shut out ordinary investors from accessing boards of the companies of which they are part owners.
Only 5 per cent of the top 200 companies draw more than 500 shareholders to their AGM. Rather than being an effective communication forum, AGMs are increasingly viewed as an opportunity for a few disgruntled retail shareholders to ‘vent their spleenʼ at the board.
From my research with ComputerShare and Linkmarket the figure off 4-5% of eligible voters bother to vote is the norm - most of my friends mention "why bother to vote when the big end off town, decide the outcome!".
So the 25% figure for the remuneration resolution was a con job perpetrated on the Shareholders Association who had input into it being adopted....u need at least one large top 20 to get annoyed in the majority of ASX companies for it to get pass the the 25%.
The following argument is a joke as management and board members had preference to have face to face junkets at shareholders expense.
Alan Joyce recently mentioned that there is need to have business people to have these meeting over lunch as over zoom u don’t get the body language when making deals
Institutional shareholders (and to a certain extent listed companies themselves) argue that higher levels of continuous disclosure combined with companies using more corporate briefings, teleconferences and webcasts have rendered the AGM largely irrelevant.
It’s ironic that they never bothered to use this technology that was availed too them, yet they haven’t given up to corral us onto to this technology!
