Yes, we know it’s mid-summer, but now really is the time to start thinking about your 2025 Annual Meeting, while you have a bit of idle time to reflect on what worked well – and not so well in 2025 – both at your company and at other companies like your own – and to prepare early for 2026.
For starters, take a look at our reports on VSMs – on the best – and on those that had glitches, glaring oversights and lapses in terms of best practices. And there are some grand successes to learn from too. (There are five reviews in this issue, four in the 2nd Quarter 2024 issue and one in the last issue (Apple, where we realized that we had been snookered when the Chairman, whom normally we admire greatly, substituted a meandering monologue for the questions that were still left in the queue) - highlighting the good, the bad - and the ugly.
Another very important thing is to carefully review your entire Meeting Team – and especially your key outside suppliers, where, in case you haven’t noticed, staffing cuts, staff turnover and the business environment in general has created even more instability than usual.
Above all – make sure that YOU will have the “A-Team” at each key supplier and not a bunch of know-nothing newbies, who seem to be filling the gaps at suppliers like the proverbial flies on a pie.
“Meeting Compression” is getting worse and worse:
A 5/28 study by ISS showed that 20.6% of the Russell 300 companies were held on just five days in May and one in June, which we believe consumed all the capacity there IS for VSMs on those days.
Be sure to book your suppliers – and your preferred Meeting dates and times EARLY.
Lastly, it really is the beginning of the “engagement season” and our advice is to do your homework and engage EARLY.
The coming season, in our opinion, represents the biggest opportunity in living memory to put a dent in the hundreds of shareholder proposals that have no meaningful economic value for shareholders in the big scheme of things - and consume a lot of totally useless time and effort to negotiate or fight them off. Most important to note, they are producing massive “voter fatigue” where shareholders simply pitch the proxy materials, rather than truly “engage” – and take the time and trouble to vote their shares. See below for some very encouraging statistics.
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