If your company achieved a quorum last year - and was able to pass all or most of the items on the agenda, as most companies were - the OPTIMIZER feel certain that you will be able to do the same this season - with the right game plan, and with the right service providers, of course.
BROADRIDGE, the largest provider of Shareholder-Meeting Services - and Virtual Meeting Services too - by far - jumped out of the gate on March 26th with a conference call, open to all public companies, and with all their senior management team on the line - to cover their current state of readiness across the board. Good news indeed!
Bob Schifellite, President of the Investor Services Division, began by expressing their “Confidence in our ability to serve you” throughout the crisis and noting, very importantly, that Broadridge has been deemed an “Essential, Critical Infrastructure business” with “Essential Critical Infrastructure Employees,” by the U.S. government and in Ontario, Canada.
Especially important for issuers to note, 95% of all votes recorded by Broadridge through August 2019 were processed electronically - via instructions initiated by voters themselves - using voting platforms designed for institutional investors and custodians - as well as platforms for ordinary individual investors voting by internet, telephone or mobile devices.
Currently, Broadridge has operational facilities in seven separate locations; two in the greater NY area, one in Kansas City and in Texas, California, Connecticut - and one in Canada. Very important to note, only 5% of all items “delivered” to voters are “full packages” these days - with the vast majority of the deliveries - and the votes represented - being delivered electronically.
As to the relatively few number of votes returned via the mail these days - typically less than 5% of all votes cast - Broadridge has the ability to prioritize each incoming item by scanning the meeting date - and the shares - from multiple locations.
In addition, all of the client-services staff are currently working from home - with no changes at all that are apparent to us, we’d note, except for a heightened sense of urgency all around.
Broadridge is expecting the number of Virtual Meetings to grow from about 350 in 2019 to at least 1300 by season-end 2020. Currently, many of the busiest days in May - most of them Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays - are becoming fully booked-up. But many clients have been open to changing their meeting times - and days - to less busy ones in order to have Virtual-Only meetings.
COMPUTERSHARE, the country’s largest transfer agent, and keeper of registered shareholder records by a large margin, weighed in on March 27th with a conference call of its own, offering similar reassurances:
“We are operating well,” Jennifer Warren, the CEO of Computershare’s North American Issuer Services business told listeners. Prior opposition to Virtual Meetings has “eased” in light of the coronavirus pandemic, institutional investors are being much more “lenient” about meeting details, and ideas about “Best Practices” are “loosening” - at least for this season.
We very much liked their tips: to “Mitigate technological risk” - to “Brand it up” - “Design for impact” and to “Control the Q&A” (though please see the OPTIMIZER’s own tips, and be careful not to “over-control” the Q&A) and to “Manage the After-Meeting activities.”
Computershare is geared to support audio-only meetings this season - with slides - but that should not really prevent companies from using additional service providers for video clips, or to facilitate phoned-in questions if a client company wants to have them. CPU offers strong meeting-management support for its own offerings, including a Meeting Manager Walk-Through, a rehearsal/practice session and full staff support on the meeting day…and said that currently, they can set up a Virtual Meeting in one to two days.
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