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

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