The Annual General Meeting Season
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Annual general meetings are badly broken. As a company director I love the idea of AGMs - rubbing shoulders with shareholders, being held accountable in a face-to-face forum - but the repeated anti-climax of experience suggests thats mostly a romantic fiction. What can we do to fix this, to make shareholder engagement more meaningful?
The question AGMs should spend less time on is: 'what happened?'
The question they should spend more time on is, 'whats likely to happen?' ie information thats more pertinent to why shareholders might wish to keep their shares.
One model we could look to is the US - in Section 21E of their Securities Exchange Act - which has a market-oriented "safe harbour" rule ... READ MORE
Released by Business Spectator - 6 May 2013
The body that probably knows most about annual general meetings, corporate governance and regulation wants the federal government to destroy the AGM as we know it and start afresh with something more closely related to the 21st century than the 19th.
If Chartered Secretaries Australia has its way, the tedious ritual and decision making function would be removed from the AGM - no more voting, no more chairmen with proxies in the back pocket making the whole process a dead rubber anyway, no more technical shilly-shallying over motions put and seconded and points of order ... READ MORE
Released Sydney Morning Herald - January 2013
The original submission from CSA is a fascinating read ... READ MORE
Released by Chartered Secretaries Australia - December 2012