Every year companies hold mandatory annual general meetings (AGMs) where management and directors generally present an annual report containing information for interested shareholders about the company's performance and strategy, allowing shareholders to vote on company issues as well as the selection of the company's board of directors.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the 2020 general meeting season throughout Europe. In almost all countries, gatherings of people and freedom of movement were temporarily restricted. Holding a general meeting on-site under these conditions was impossible. Governments in several countries, therefore, decided to relax existing rules governing participation in general meetings, sometimes to the detriment of shareholders.
To ensure shareholder rights are upheld in the future, BETTER FINANCE and its German Member Organisation, DSW (German Shareholders' Association) are reaching out to individual investors across the EU to learn about shareholders' perceptions of virtual-only general meetings. As a part of this study, we kindly ask individual shareholders' to fill out a short survey here.
On behalf of all individual shareholders in Europe, we thank you for your valuable feedback.
Fill out the Individual Investors' survey here.