How Shifting from In-Person to Virtual-Only Shareholder Meetings Affects Shareholders’ Voice

84 Pages Posted: 16 Aug 2020 Last revised: 12 Apr 2021

See all articles by Miriam Schwartz-Ziv

Miriam Schwartz-Ziv

Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Department of Finance and Banking; ECGI (European Corporate Governance Institute)

Date Written: March 28, 2021

Abstract

Virtual-only shareholder meetings have become dramatically more common following COVID-19. Analysis of transcripts and recordings of in-person versus virtual-only shareholder meetings show that virtual-only meetings are shorter and dedicate less time to addressing shareholders’ concerns. I construct a unique dataset documenting questions shareholders submitted at virtual-only shareholder meetings. Precisely when shareholders vote against management recommendation, indicating contention with management, firms are likely to limit shareholders’ voice: they ignore shareholders’ questions and explicitly limit the scope of questions addressed. Such actions are shown to limit the extent of communication at shareholder meetings.


Note: Presentation of previous version of the paper is available at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjp6VcISqDE&feature=youtu.be

Keywords: Shareholder meetings, shareholder votes, shareholder voice, virtual, in-person, COVID-19

JEL Classification: G30, G34, G39, M20, O14, O33

Suggested Citation

Schwartz-Ziv, Miriam, How Shifting from In-Person to Virtual-Only Shareholder Meetings Affects Shareholders’ Voice (March 28, 2021). European Corporate Governance Institute – Finance Working Paper No. 748/2021, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3674998 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3674998

Miriam Schwartz-Ziv (Contact Author)

Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Department of Finance and Banking ( email )

Mount Scopus
Jerusalem, 91905
Israel

ECGI (European Corporate Governance Institute) ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

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