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The Shareholder Forum™
Purpose
The Shareholder Forum provides all decision-makers – from the
ultimate owners of capital to the corporate managers who use their
capital, and all of the professionals in between – with reliably
effective access to the information and views participants consider
relevant to their respective responsibilities for the common objective
of using capital to produce goods and services.
Access Policies
To provide the required investor access without regulatory constraints,
the Forum developed policies and practices allowing it to function as an
SEC-defined independent moderator. We also adopted well-established
publishing standards to assure essential participant privacy and
communication rights.
These carefully defined and thoroughly tested
Forum policies are the foundation of our unique marketplace resource
for clearly fair access to information and exchanges of views.
History
We have been doing this for more than two decades. The Forum programs
were initiated in 1999 by the CFA
Society New York (at the time known as the New York Society of
Security Analysts) with lead investor and former corporate investment
banker
Gary Lutin as guest chairman to address the professional interests
of the Society’s members.
Independently supported by Mr. Lutin since 2001, the Forum’s public
programs – often in collaboration with the CFA Society as well as with
other educational institutions such as the Columbia Schools of Business
and Journalism, the Yale School of Management and The Conference Board –
have achieved wide recognition for their effective definition of both
company-specific and marketplace issues, followed by an orderly exchange
of the information and views needed to resolve them.
The Forum's ability to convene all key decision-making constituencies
and influence leaders has been applied to subjects ranging from
corporate control contests
to the establishment of consensus marketplace
standards for fair disclosure,
and has been relied upon by virtually every major U.S. fund manager and
the many other investors who have participated in programs that
addressed their interests.
Commitment
The Forum welcomes suggestions for its continuing support of fair access
to the information needed by both shareholders and corporate managers.
Responding to the recent increases in investor engagement and activism,
we have established a strong policy commitment to supporting corporate
managers who wish to provide the leadership expected of them by assuring
orderly reviews of issues. We will of course also continue to welcome
the initiation of company-specific programs by shareholders concerned
with the use of their capital to produce goods and services, and we
naturally remain committed to addressing general marketplace interests
in collaboration with educational institutions and publishers. |
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IR Magazine,
March 3, 2010
article
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Poor take-up of
electronic voting
Mar 03,
2010
But DIRK survey shows IROs’ overall mood
improving
German issuers are cautious about adopting electronic voting and
online annual meetings, according to the findings of new research from
DIRK, the German investor relations
association.
The caution exists despite moves by European politicians to encourage
electronic shareholder communications at the annual meeting. Last year saw
the deadline for the implementation of the Shareholder Rights Directive,
which expressly permits companies to use electronic voting and meetings.
DIRK’s survey finds 75 percent of respondents are not considering allowing
electronic voting this year. By contrast, just 3 percent have permitted it
and a further 23 percent are considering the option for the future (figures
have been rounded).
‘The reticence among German companies to implement electronic voting does
not come as much of a surprise,’ comments Bernhard Wolf, president of DIRK
and head of corporate communications at GfK, the market research group that
conducted the survey on behalf of DIRK.
‘Although the legislature has put the necessary framework in place, the
problem lies in the implementation. A veritable culture of dispute has
developed in Germany, especially among the prominent and major DAX
companies: the greater the extent to which a minority escalates an issue
during an annual general meeting, the greater the number of column inches
dedicated to that company.
‘The grounded discussion preferred by the board of management and the
majority of the shareholders is thus often overlooked. In this sort of
environment, companies are unwilling to take any risks, for fear of opening
themselves up to further objections and actions for annulment.’
Online meetings are also failing to take off. Only a quarter of respondents
plan to broadcast their annual meeting over the internet to the public,
finds DIRK. Bigger companies are at least showing strong interest in this
area, with 75 percent of DAX companies considering taking this step.
The survey notes, however, that broadcasts that take place usually only
contain speeches from the chairmen of the management and supervisory boards,
while the general discussion and voting ‘are seldom broadcast’.
DIRK conducts its survey – called the sentiment indicator – twice a year to
measure sentiment among IROs across Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well
as gauge feelings on key issues.
This spring’s results offer some encouragement for the future. The
indicator’s primary aim is to ascertain how positive issuers are about the
present and future situation and this latest indicator sees an improvement
in sentiment for the second consecutive year. This follows a steep decline
in sentiment that began in 2007 and continued until spring 2009.
The survey also asked some more specific questions, which further reveal the
optimistic mood among many IROs. The proportion of German companies
expecting to make cuts to their IR teams fell to 5 percent, in line with the
long-term average and down from 10 percent in the autumn 2009 survey. In
addition, the number of issuers predicting a drop in the number of IR-related
events fell to 6 percent, which is way down from the 24 percent that
expected cuts this time last year.
Finally, the number of companies anticipating a fall in analyst coverage
dropped for the fourth consecutive survey: three quarters of respondents
expect coverage to remain stable during the first half of 2010.
The DIRK sentiment indicator is based on a poll of 460 IR departments in
Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Response rates usually stand at around 50
percent, according to DIRK.
By
Tim Human
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