Your AGM is an important event on your corporate calendar. It allows company management, directors and shareholders to review the past year’s performance and make decisions on important affairs.
According to the Corporate Governance Code, your Board should address shareholder questions during an AGM. We understand that for many companies this can seem like a daunting task. That’s why we’ve produced some suggestions to ensure your session runs smoothly.
Empower your Board members
To help your Board feel confident to address questions at the AGM, having a well-prepared Q&A session is essential. We suggest including a list of anticipated questions in the AGM pack provided to your Board members ahead of the AGM. Below are four suggestions to help prepare this list.
- Allow early submission
Encourage shareholders to submit questions prior to your AGM. This can be easily facilitated by including information in your AGM mail pack, or via your company’s meeting portal. - Review your annual report
The easiest way to do this is to select a subject matter expert from your Company Secretarial provider who can review your Annual Report and identify questions most likely to be raised at the meeting. - Provide a list to your Board
To empower your Board to readily answer questions during the meeting, we suggest you prepare a suggested Q&A list in the AGM pack. With notes on hand they will feel more prepared and confident to respond to a range of questions. - Hold an internal ‘Think Tank’
For companies anticipating large scale attendance, holding an internal ‘Think Tank’ session that includes senior employees of the company and the professional parties such as your Company Secretarial provider can produce important insights to equip your Board to respond with comprehensive answers.
Control Q&A proceedings
In addition to preparing your Board, it’s important to ensure your Q&A session runs efficiently. Here are three suggestions to help you improve the way you run your session:
- Choose a Master of Ceremonies
To ensure your Q&A session moves smoothly, consider engaging a professional ‘Master of Ceremonies’ to manage the queue of questions, enforce the question limit per shareholder and manage time spent answering each question. - Use technology to your advantage
Online meeting technology provides many features to ensure your AGM runs smoothly. One of these is the ability to group questions by topic or category. Grouping questions ahead of time can avoid the Board having to repeat themselves numerous times throughout the session. - Be transparent if any questions are unanswered
If for some reason, the Board is unable to answer any questions put forward during the meeting, companies should post the responses on company’s portal as quickly as possible following the conclusion of the AGM.
Top 7 question topics from the 2023 peak meeting season
Computershare’s Corporate Secretarial experts would like to offer some key observations from the 2023 peak meetings season in Hong Kong, to help inform your future planning.
- Continuing and/or improving earnings
- Dividend policy
- Establishing the roles of Chairman and Chief Executive – where one person holds both positions
- ESG progress, performance, and net-zero ambitions
- Company outlook for FY24
- Reducing operational costs through use of Artificial Intelligence
- Financial statements – where shareholders disagree with treatment
Q&A is an important part of your shareholder meetings. If you need further intelligence and would like to hear more about best practice for both pre and post AGM, please contact Computershare’s Company Secretarial Service Team.