In-House Corner: Annual Shareholder Meetings

This feature of our blog is where our in-house readers share tips, anecdotes and thoughts about things that come up in their daily practice. This particular batch of thoughts is about how preparation of annual shareholder meetings has evolved since the pandemic:

1. "We have gone back to the old-style in-person meeting and it is unbelievably nice. The hybrid is the worst possible option, having to navigate the unique logistical challenges of both formats." 
2. "Virtual only meetings are quite a godsend. Overall prep is substantially less intensive than it used to be for in-person meetings and requires less FTE involvement and total hours. The overall background materials are much less, and prep in terms of scope and size for questions has been reduced as we take only questions that are germane to the matters to be brought before the meeting." 
3. "Security briefings, coordination of facilities, catering, etc. are all a thing of the past. Core materials are basically the same but we don't prepare binders anymore because we've eliminated a lot of the ancillary paperwork (security plan, prep for disruptions, etc.)." 
4. "I have supported annual meetings for companies that have opted to do virtual only in recent years.  Preparation for virtual only meetings is so much simpler, cleaner and more straightforward with much less time spent on logistics and the pomp and circumstance of an in-person meeting. 
   There is still preparation with management for Q&A and ordinary course walk through of how to join the meeting, but the scenario planning for disasters (i.e., bomb or other physical threat) or unruly shareholders has reduced the time spent on alternative scripts.  All-in-all, much less time planning than what they used to be." 
5. "We still have physical meetings (and did so during the pandemic). We are always looking for better ways and to be more efficient (a decade ago, the prep book contained 80 pages and it is now under 10 pages) but essentially do it in a similar manner." 
6. "Maybe it's me and the pandemic changed my perspective, but running the annual meeting seems far easier these days compared to before 2019. We do have more staff working on the event, so maybe that's it."