A diverse working group and steering committee representing retail and institutional investors, public companies, and service providers, co-chaired by CII Executive Director Amy Borrus and Society President & CEO Darla Stuckey, released today this "Report of the 2020 Multi-Stakeholder Working Group on Practices for Virtual Shareholder Meetings" for companies to consider in connection with their annual meeting format decision-making generally, and virtual shareholder meetings (VSM) specifically, for the upcoming and future proxy seasons. The report acknowledges the pandemic-prompted spike in virtual meetings coincident with advancing technology that increasingly accommodates all shapes and sizes of virtual events, while recognizing the overarching objective of meaningful, equitable, and broad shareholder meeting participation.
In addition to relevant considerations accompanying each of the standard, increasingly common, and evolving, VSM practices, the timely report includes key 2018 - 2020 meeting statistics and aggregate and state-specific up-to-date information concerning relevant state laws on virtual-only, hybrid, and in-person shareholder meetings.
A number of the working group and steering committee members previously developed these April 2018 "Principles and Best Practices for Virtual Annual Shareowner Meetings," many of which have since become standard practice.
See the release; "The Virtual Shareholder Meeting Q&A – and How to Tackle It" and "The Five Best VSMs To Review – And To Learn From… The Most Noteworthy Feature Of The Very Best VSMs? Women!" from the Shareholder Service Optimizer, courtesy of Society member, Carl Hagberg; and numerous additional resources on our Virtual Shareholder Meetings page.