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The world of 2020 was a complex place – in all aspects of life, the pace of change has never been as fast as it is now, but at the same time, will never be this slow again.
This applies to the world of corporate governance and communication as much as anything else. The traditional world of Annual General Meetings, resolutions, board elections and institutional shareholders is having to operate in a new environment. This includes cross-border complexity, increasing amounts of regulation, growing pressure to take into account environmental, social and governance issues and the need to demonstrate that you are a good corporate citizen. The answer to the question of how to run an annual general meeting has never been so cryptic.
This makes for a landscape that can often be confusing and surprisingly opaque. There are some markets where many companies do not even know who their shareholders are, and those shareholders cannot always be confident that their votes on company resolutions have been counted.
Meanwhile, there is more pressure on shareholders to prove they are responsible investors. This combination makes it more important than ever that companies and their investors can communicate with each other through the medium of AGMs and elsewhere – so that companies can explain what they are doing, with shareholders able to communicate to companies what they want and exercise their right to vote to make it happen.
But there are a number of trends that may help to make things easier. There is now a move towards increased transparency and integration of all business processes.