Covid does not give up: the shareholders’ meetings remain online. Only Enel in attendance
Only Enel among the large Italian companies will hold the shareholders’ meeting in Rome at the Music Auditorium on May 10 next. While the other big names in Piazza Affari continue to take advantage of the Covid rule which provided for remote meetings. In fact, three lines in the Milleproroghe decree were enough to extend the special regime introduced three years ago by one year, to 31 July 2023, after the pandemic cleared remote shareholders’ meetings, with the sole representative of the shareholders delegated to vote.
The Milleproroghe amendment, proposed by the League, accepted the requests of the large Italian listed companies: 25 companies that represent 85% of the capitalization of Piazza Affari prefer online. The problem is that for small shareholders to participate remotely, in addition to being very complicated, it has no purpose since there is no interaction with the top management, president and managing director which was the hall of the shareholders’ meetings. The result is that Unicredit, Tim, Mps have already held their meetings online. A modality that even makes it useless to wait until the day of the assembly to have the result of the vote on the requests given that the votes are collected earlier. But also Intesa, on April 28, Leonardo, on May 9 and Eni on the 10th of the same month have already decided not to hold physical meetings.
The costs of face-to-face meetings are high
Obviously it is better given that a “live” assembly costs a lot, over 1 million euros and engages managers and consultants for many hours. It is also the ideal pulpit for small shareholders looking for their quarter of an hour of popularity. Since only the representative delegated to the managers participates in the online meeting, he also comes avoided the trouble of having to answer awkward questions which were made not only by professional hecklers but also by people who are prepared and aware of company problems such as union representatives can be.
In short, nothing contradictory with the top management who are spared criticism and effort. There is however a problem as underlined by many observers given that the annual meetings with shareholders were the fulcrum of the comparison between companies and the market, the community and information.
“The institutional investors of the market, and their advisor proxies – he said Dario Trevisan lawyer who represents institutional investors by proxy in the shareholders’ meetings of large listed companies – they do not look favorably on the only virtual meeting, which often results in a rapid counting of the votes. The option they prefer, and already used in the US, the UK and other European countries, is the hybrid assembly, in which whoever wants connects and votes remotely and others participate physically. Live debate has a different value than written responses”.
Remotely only until the end of July
The current law saves the large listed companies from assemblies only until July 31st but there are already proposals to reform the assembly rules to allow live intervention only to shareholders with a significant package (minimum threshold of 50-100 thousand euros), a measure that would eliminate hecklers looking for visibility. It should be underlined that Beppe Grillo managed to get a lot of media coverage, before founding the M5S by participating, since 2007, in the Telecom assemblies.
It is very difficult for small shareholders to participate in a meeting convened in the Covid manner where it is only possible to vote through the delegate chosen by the company, also because the banks that send shareholders’ communications to their customers are unable to provide the explanations necessary.