A month or so ago we suddenly realized that a feature that made the best VSMs so special had gone totally unremarked. So we emailed a little preview of the article we intended to write in this issue to our great friends at TheCorporateCounsel.net.
“Here’s another ‘unusual observation’ about three of the four best Virtual Meetings we encountered that did not occur to us until a week or so after we published our reviews in the second quarter OPTIMIZER: The three very best meetings all gave significant ‘air time’ to WOMEN. To us, this completely changed the tone - and the tenor - and the content of the meeting in quite an amazing way vs. the traditional meeting model - where, in the senior-editor’s 50+ years of attending shareholder meetings, the proceedings were, almost always, completely dominated by ‘old white men.’”
“At Starbucks, after a few opening remarks from the CEO, he turned the meeting over to Rachel Gonzalez, the GC, who briskly ran ‘the official business of the meeting,’ introduced the Shareholder Proponent, and, since the proponent’s issue - on diversity and inclusion - was clearly in her wheelhouse, she gave the company’s response in a very thorough and persuasive manner. Two other senior women officers, Rossann Williams, EVP and President of US and Canadian Operations, and Rosalind Gates Brewer, the COO, answered several Covid-19 related Qs from shareholders that were squarely in their wheelhouse.
“At UnitedHealth Group, the Chairman and CEO followed a similar playbook - turning the ‘official part’ of the meeting over to Board Secretary Dannette Smith, who moved the meeting along briskly and introduced the Shareholder Proponent there too. The first shareholder question that was teed-up - on the director-selection process - was fielded in a wonderfully in-depth and highly articulate way by a Director, and Chair of the Governance and Nominating Committee, Michelle Cooper.
“The United Parcel Service meeting was marked by the elevation of the highly talented and successful Carol Tomé - a long term UPS Director - to become the CEO. And what a pleasure it was to hear this wonderfully accomplished woman answer several shareholder questions in her new capacity.
“All four of our original top-four meetings were also marked by another feature that we have long been advocating as a way to add interest and depth to shareholder meetings - and to showcase the strong governance - and the strong bench of talent (when there is one) - the practice of the CEO to call on the person who is really the best person to answer, rather than to feature “the old white guy” as the source of all knowledge.
“The dominance of “old white men” at shareholder meetings has long been an issue with your senior-editor - despite, or perhaps because of now being one himself. Here’s an article about this from 2017…https://optimizeronline.com/diversity-and-the-prevalence-of-old-white-men-at-shareholder-meetings/ But the 2020 meeting season seems to us to be a game-changing one - and one that is long overdue.”
But OOOPS - within a week of their publishing the little blurb, we realized with a start that ALL FOUR of or then four-best meetings we reviewed gave women a prominent role: We had been so impressed by the well-oiled progress of the Intel meeting, one of the first we listened to, that we hadn’t remarked on the key role played by Intel’s Corporate Secretary, Susie Giordano, who handled the official business of the meeting so smoothly and efficiently.
Readers; we urge you to go back and read the full reviews of the Intel, Starbucks, UnitedHealth and UPS Virtual Meetings in our second-quarter issue…or, better yet, to tune in a few via their website Investor pages.
But oops yet again …and a REALLY BIG OMISSION ON OUR PART as it turned out… we heard from at least four sources that the 2020 GM meeting was also one of the very best…And we realized at once, to our chagrin, that a woman - the estimable Mary Barra - had presided in her role as Chairman at THAT meeting.
So Here Is Our Review Of The GM Meeting, Which Now Takes First-Place In Our Book, for reasons we will cite as we go:
The GM meeting, which ran just over an hour and seventeen minutes, began with a lively 10-minute product-oriented video for the early-arrivals. Then, in a prerecorded video - and the only one of our top-five picks to have any videos at all - Chairman and CEO Mary Barra opened the meeting and gave a brief preview of a video to come, starting with GMs actions and its future efforts to deal with racial injustice and ‘inclusion,’ a report on the COVID pandemic and a summary of “the state of the business.”
Then she turned the formal part of the meeting over to Rick Hansen, the Corporate Secretary, where his script is well worth studying for its thoroughness and its scrupulous “correctness.”
There were nine items on the agenda; five management proposals plus a proposal by John Chevedden on his campaign to allow shareholders to act by written consent, one on Proxy Access, one on Human Rights from a group of religious orders and a proposal re: Lobbying Activities from the NYC Comptroller, where Chairman Barra called on each proponent in turn, and cut considerable slack when most of them went over their times limits, politely asking only the longest-winded one to please wrap up his remarks, which he did at once.
While we usually advise companies to simply say thanks, and state that their response is in the proxy materials, Barra commented briefly - and to very good effect - on three of the presentations to better clarify GM’s actual record, which - on human rights and ambitious goals for zero-emissions - is a very impressive record indeed.
Then, a quick cut back to Rick, who announced that there were 180 shareholders and guests in attendance via the webcast, gave the preliminary report on the voting and teed up the video wherein Barra addressed racial injustice and GM’s very pointed and elaborate action plan, GM’s amazing - and inspiring response to COVID - with great footage to show how quickly they pivoted to turn out large numbers of ventilators and protective equipment - and an in-depth review of GM’s progress on all-electric vehicles, its goals toward zero-emissions and the appointment of a Chief Sustainability Officer - and to note that GM is among the top-50 companies in the world for “diversity” and overall “good culture”…And WOW, she surely convinced and inspired US.
Then Rick opened up the Q&A period, and again provided the toll-free number that shareholders could call, and press ‘star-one’ to be placed in queue. As far as we know, GM was the only company to provide what was previously a fairly common facility to shareholders this season, and this alone would put them number-one with us.
The first question was from the phone line - and EEEK - the caller had dropped off the line! Rick invited the caller to try again and smoothly segued to a question that had come in via the Investor Page - on the fate (no surprise here) of the GM dividend, followed by a question from the meeting-app on electric vehicles. Then, four good questions in a row from the phone - three of them from analysts and investor advisors, mostly probing the ‘disconnects’ between GM’s steady business progress, and leadership, accompanied by a still-lagging stock price…and a call from Tim Smith, a long-term leader in the socially-responsible investment business…and a final Q from the meeting portal on GM’s charitable contributions, and on how to qualify for them…Then a strong closing statement from Mary, emphasizing again GM’s focus on diversity and inclusion.
A brief personal note on shareholder meetings and brand loyalty: We have been GM-only customers for over 20 years…and we are currently on our tenth Suburban or Yukon where we are completely hooked. We switched to GM to continue to “buy American” after a very long and loyal run with Ford - when we went to a Ford shareholder meeting and were told that “defects are an unavoidable part of the auto business” - and we realized that we were seeing that ourselves as, thanks to that approach, we think, each year’s Explorer was worse than last year’s. We sold our Ford stock that very day and never had cause to regret it.
The content of this year’s GM meeting - which reflected deep respect for customers, employees, society at large - and especially for stockholders, whom most VSM meeting hosts blew off badly this year - went a very long way to cement our loyalty more firmly than ever…and made us proud to be GM owners.
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