The Shareholder ForumTM

Electronic Participation in Shareholder Meetings

Forum Home Page [see Broadridge note below]

"E-Meetings" Home Page

"E-Meetings" Program Reference

 

E-Meetings Review

a project of

The Shareholder Forum

in support of its program for

Electronic Participation in Shareholder Meetings

 

April 9, 2010

 

Dear Forum Participant,

 

This is the first in a series of weekly reports that we will be preparing as part of a new Shareholder Forum program about e-meetings to keep you informed of the issues and developments you would want to consider in deciding what is needed to adapt shareholder meetings to the world of electronic communication.

 

The report will be distributed to participants at about noon every Friday until the final Panel report is issued, probably in July, and will be posted on the program web by Monday morning. (Click here for where you’ll find the postings.)

 

A main feature of E-Meetings Review is to report on examples of meetings with electronic participation, such as those planned by Best Buy and Intel. As proxy season unfolds, more companies are introducing electronic participation in their shareholder meetings. And while these initiatives vary in scope, their purposes are generally the same: first, to increase shareholder participation, and second, to reduce costs – which itself naturally allows broader participation. This report will be covering a number of these early adapters and will be supplemented with a web site list of the meetings we plan to observe. (Click here for the location of posted company meetings.)

 

To make this report as useful as possible, I ask for your input. Please let us know of any companies with plans for meetings that you think we should include in our list for observation, or companies that already held their annual meetings using electronic participation that we can learn from. Also, please tell us what issues you think may arise as companies migrate to "virtual" meetings.

 

With technology already an integral part of quarterly earnings calls, it is only a matter of time before it becomes a part of annual meetings – at least in some form. Shining a light on issues, best practices, and examples we can all learn from will help you make your adaptation to electronic communications a fairer and more orderly process.

 

Avital Louria Hahn

E-Meetings Review, a Shareholder Forum project

516-782-2715

avital.hahn@shareholderforum.com

 

 

© 2010 The Shareholder Forum

 

 

 

This Forum program is open, free of charge, to anyone concerned with investor interests in the development of standards for conducting shareholder meetings with electronic participation. As stated in the posted Conditions of Participation, the Forum's purpose is to provide decision-makers with access to information and a free exchange of views on the issues presented in the program's Forum Summary. Each participant is expected to make independent use of information obtained through the Forum, subject to the privacy rights of other participants.  It is a Forum rule that participants will not be identified or quoted without their explicit permission.

The organization of this Forum program was encouraged by Walden Asset Management, and is proceeding with the invited leadership support of Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. and Intel Corporation to address issues relevant to broad public interests in marketplace practices, rather than investor decisions relating to only a single company. The Forum may therefore invite program support of several companies that can provide both expertise and examples of leadership relating to the issues being addressed.

Inquiries about this Forum program and requests to be included in its distribution list may be addressed to e-mtg@shareholderforum.com.

The information provided to Forum participants is intended for their private reference, and permission has not been granted for the republishing of any copyrighted material. The material presented on this web site is the responsibility of Gary Lutin, as chairman of the Shareholder Forum.

Shareholder Forum™ is a trademark owned by The Shareholder Forum, Inc., for the programs conducted since 1999 to support investor access to decision-making information. It should be noted that we have no responsibility for the services that Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., introduced for review in the Forum's 2010 "E-Meetings" program and has since been offering with the “Shareholder Forum” name, and we have asked Broadridge to use a different name that does not suggest our support or endorsement.