Long-term readers will recall, we hope, our many articles on “The Best and Worst Annual Meeting Materials to Cross Our Desk” each year – many of which inspired readers to do better, we were told – many of which engendered hearty belly-laughs – and some of which inspired pure pity, for the poor fools who’d fouled up badly.
Corporate Secretaries, meeting planners, IRO folks andothergovernanceprofessionalsaskabout Annual Meeting Briefing-Book practices at virtually every conference on such matters we’ve ever attended.
In late March, your editor attended a dinner meeting where a very, very lively discussion of the newest and “hottest topics” that attendees feel are out there on the Annual Meeting front super- charged the entire evening.
Pity poor Citi – whose top management team – and board – were taken totally by surprise when the Fed refused to allow Citi to increase the quarterly dividend from a measly penny a share and to buy back shares to prop up the stock – as everyone, including the investor community, was confidently expecting – and where the bombshell dropped just a few weeks before Citi’s annual meeting.
More ill-winds seem to be sweeping the streets in the run-up to the spring meeting season: So far this year, four well-known companies have sued gadfly John Chevedden, seeking to block his non-binding proposals from coming to a vote: EMC Corp., Express Scripts Holding Co., Omnicom Group, Inc. and Chipotle Mexican Grill.
Whoopee! After the press began to shine increasingly strong spotlights on the collection, sale and use of advance looks at potentially market-moving data…
