Virtual Meetings Gain Traction
This year, through June, Broadridge has enabled 140 Virtual Shareholder Meetings – almost all of them “virtual-only” – with no in-person attendees
This year, through June, Broadridge has enabled 140 Virtual Shareholder Meetings – almost all of them “virtual-only” – with no in-person attendees
How’s this for a shareholder meeting horror-story to take to heart?
Despite the relatively quiet season on the whole, we, and our Team of 50 Independent Inspectors of Election, experienced more weird and wacky events than ever before – and more events where corporate managers, and in many cases their outside counsel too, seemed way behind the curve.
The big spring meeting season was surprisingly uneventful on the whole – with lots of proxy-access proposals passing – or being adopted voluntarily – and with most says-on-pay sailing by with 90%+ margins…much as we’d predicted.
The first, and perhaps the most urgently needed step, we say, is for issuers to review the Terms and Conditions governing their own plan, and revise them so that any time the Plan balance is less than one full share, the Plan Agent will, henceforth, liquidate the fractional share, send a check, and close the account.
As we just learned at the SSA conference in July, a sweeping re-draft of the so-called Uniform Abandoned Property Act has been approved, that would, among other things, call for state treasurers to wait at least three years before selling any “underlying securities” deemed abandoned…