Apr 25, 2022 | 2022, 2022 Q1, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues, Virtual Meetings
Not by our reckoning: After reading the ISS assessment in their quarterly update, we went straight to the books - and to our own records of 2022 Shareholder Meetings scheduled as of April 1, 2022. That day, we had 480 meetings booked where our team of Inspectors were...
Apr 13, 2022 | 2021, 2021 Q3, Annual Meetings, Issues, Virtual Meetings
XYZ Corporation welcomes you to its __th Annual Meeting of Stockholders. In fairness to all stockholders in attendance, and in order to provide stockholders an opportunity to be heard – and in the interest of conducting an orderly meeting, within a reasonable time...
Apr 13, 2022 | 2021, 2021 Q3, Annual Meetings, Issues, Virtual Meetings
With our comments on the most important best practices to adopt - and on bad and worst practices to avoid: Twenty minutes prior to the Meeting time there should be a welcoming message on the Meeting site - with a visually pleasing background, easy-to-read typefaces...
Apr 5, 2022 | 2022, 2022 Q1, Annual Meetings
First and most important, it should be a fully-written-out and carefully annotated script - ideally color-coded - with large, easy-to-read type and clearly written cues for all participants - with color-coded speakers’ and technicians’ names - and with easily accessed...
Apr 5, 2022 | 2022, 2022 Q1, Annual Meetings, Issues
Now that you’re done with the preliminary homework of scoping, mapping and analyzing your shareholder demographics, the next step is to review your meeting options with regard to “location” - and to decide on a venue, an agenda, and the technological tools - including...
Mar 15, 2022 | 2021, 2021 Q3, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues
In light of the hundreds and hundreds of shareholder meetings your editors have attended - and especially in light of the many meeting critiques we have published, covering both the best - and the worst meetings - and the many blunders and bloopers we’ve seen - we...
Feb 14, 2022 | 2021, 2021 Q4, Featured, Investor Relations, Issues, Shareholder Services
In the last few weeks of 2021 we had inquiries from three readers on this subject - one of our favorite ones - so we placed calls to a few colleagues who’ve had success here, and reviewed some of our own past articles for other ideas: Peggy Foran, who pioneered the...
Feb 14, 2022 | 2021, 2021 Q4, Featured, Inspectors of Election, Issues, Virtual Meetings
In 2021 - thanks largely to sensible Covid-era precautions - U.S. companies overwhelmingly relied on “Virtual” attendance of Inspectors of Election - and auditor representatives too - at their shareholder meetings. Our sister-company, CT Hagberg LLC, logged fewer than...
Feb 14, 2022 | 2021, 2021 Q4, Featured, Investor Relations, Issues, Shareholder Services
This year, The OPTIMIZER believes that the battle for the management-friendly retail investor vote will be harder to win than ever before - even while the retail vote will be a bigger decider than ever before. Here’s why: Over the past 18 months more than 22 million...
Feb 14, 2022 | 2021 Q4, Annual Meetings, Featured, Issues, Virtual Meetings
The number-one question we’re being asked as readers gear up for the 2022 Meeting Season, and as Covid cases began rising again, is “What are most companies planning to do this year?” So far, as our sister-company, that will provide Inspectors of Election at over 500...
Feb 13, 2022 | 2021, 2021 Q4, Featured, Proxy
An open letter to issuers, proxy solicitors and advisors and their legal counsel: Dear friends and colleagues; We are pleased and excited to announce that CT Hagberg LLC is now prepared to offer an outstanding roster of Independent Inspectors of Election who stand...
Aug 13, 2021 | 2021, 2021 Q2, Annual Meetings, Issues, Virtual Meetings
Our 2021 Special Supplement, available only at OptimizerOnline.com, featured nearly a dozen interviews with prominent shareholder meeting observers - all of whom - including us - predicted record-breaking success for ESG proposals this season - although we’re not sure...
Aug 9, 2021 | 2021, 2021 Q2, Issues, Transfer Agents
In something of a bombshell announcement, Equiniti Group PLC - the UK-based owner of US Transfer Agent EQ - announced on May 27 that it has agreed to sell its entire portfolio of business to Earth Private Holdings, LTD - a newly-formed company owned by funds managed...
Aug 9, 2021 | 2021, 2021 Q2, Annual Meetings, Issues, Virtual Meetings
To get a good idea of how to run a well-run, shareholder-friendly and useful VSM, start, we say, with our run-throughs of this year’s VSMs of last year’s winners - UnitedHealth Group and UPS… UNITEDHEALTH GROUP’s Board Secretary Dannette Smith once again guided us...
Jul 17, 2021 | 2021 Q2, Annual Meetings, Issues, Virtual Meetings
Now that the U.S. economy is ready to open up for public meetings once again - and with plans for the 2022 Shareholder Meeting Season already needing to be considered - there has been a lot of speculation on the ultimate fate of Virtual Shareholder Meetings. Here are...
Apr 22, 2021 | 2021, 2021 Q1, Annual Meetings, Issues, Virtual Meetings
Good news: The top-four VSM service providers - Broadridge, Computershare, EQ and Mediant - worked together as a sub-committee of the “End-to-End Vote Confirmation Committee” - and, as we’d predicted they would, they have come up with ways to make it easier and surer...
Apr 22, 2021 | 2021, 2021 Q1, Annual Meetings, Issues, Virtual Meetings
As the Covid pandemic continues to make in-person shareholder meetings a poor choice for most widely-held companies, most of last year’s VSM users - and a large number of companies that used “strong keep-away rules” last year instead - have been lining up extra early,...
Feb 8, 2021 | 2020, 2020 Q4, Annual Meetings, Issues, Virtual Meetings
One of the most interesting - and encouraging - and useful developments with regard to VSMs - has been the fast-growing importance of the corporate Investor Relations staff - both in terms of preparing for the Meeting, and often, in playing a significant on-air role...
Feb 8, 2021 | 2020, 2020 Q4, Annual Meetings, Issues, Virtual Meetings
We have had many decidedly up and down experiences listening to the all-too-numerous webinars on VSMs of late where the guidance was flatly wrong, or important facts were omitted: Most notably on what to do if you lose “connectivity” during the course of your...
Feb 8, 2021 | 2020, 2020 Q4, Annual Meetings, Issues
Our good-friend and fellow VSM-reporter Doug Chia recently posted the following, from widely-followed shareholder proponent Jim McRitchie: “Here’s one for you. I just got off the virtual meeting of [XYZ company - name redacted by the OPTIMIZER since they were far from...
Feb 8, 2021 | 2020, 2020 Q4, Annual Meetings, Issues, Virtual Meetings
Glass Lewis’s late November release of its 2021 policy guidelines pretty much summed up what every major investor says they will be looking for in Shareholder Meetings in 2021: We look for robust disclosure in a company’s proxy statement which assures shareholders...
Jan 20, 2021 | 2020, 2020 Q4, Annual Meetings, Inspectors of Election, Issues, Virtual Meetings
Since the very first VSM hit the airwaves the OPTIMIZER has been advising that the Inspector of Elections should be playing a key role - mainly because, with everything taking place in cyberspace, investors really need some added assurances that all of the voting is...
Dec 5, 2020 | 2020, 2020 Q3, Issues, Records Management, Shareholder Services
The OPTIMIZER editors - and other professional “Wall-Street-Watchers” too - are always avid watchers of the “tombstones” that describe the terms of newly proposed Mergers and Acquisitions - and especially those “Offers to Purchase for Cash” - in newspapers of record...
Dec 5, 2020 | 2020, 2020 Q3, Issues, Transfer Agents
The SEC’s August 27th Release institutes a Cease and Desist Order on a virtual kitchen-sink of violations, including failure to transfer and turn securities around within required time frames, failure to report their failures to do so, failures to properly safeguard...
Dec 4, 2020 | 2020, 2020 Q3, Issues, Proxy
The OPTIMIZER’s sister-company, CT Hagberg LLC, provided the Independent Inspector of Election in September at what we believe was the second Virtual-Only proxy contest to date, at a small bank in the Midwest. Three of the bank’s investors, with roughly 30% of the...
