Annual General Meeting - AGM
No, this isn't a yearly get-together of high-ranking army guys, where they face off in very-well-strategized three-legged races. Rather, this is the yearly get-together of shareholders of a company. (The frequency of picnic games varies from company to company...)
Each year, companies are required to host an annual general meeting, giving shareholders a chance to hear from management. This gives owners (keep in mind that the shareholders are the owners of the company) an opportunity to get briefed on where business stands and to receive an update on the company's strategy going forward.
Usually, management and the board of directors will make a presentation detailing the company's annual report and take questions from shareholders. There might also be items for shareholders to vote on, such as membership on the board of directors or changes to company policy.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is Cumulative Voting?6 Views
Finance, a la shmoop. What is cumulative voting? All right people there are two
flavors of voting in the land of common stock, there's cumulative and statutory. [Two ice cream cones held next to each other]
Cumulative voting just somehow sounds cooler, doesn't it? It allows teams to [Guy points at the ice cream cone and drops it]
join forces and pool their votes cumulatively
for target candidates to get elected that is it allows for the disaggregation,
$5 word there, of board members when voting. That is if a shareholder has one [5 dollar price tag appears]
percent of the common shares outstanding of a company and cumulative voting is [Pie chart showing the small 1% holding]
allowed and there are five candidates being elected, well that shareholder can
vote effectively five percent of their total shares voteable for just one
candidate. Said graphically with blood and guts it looks like this. Cumulative [Table showing shares equalling number of votes per candidate]
voting helps the little guy to have a big presence, with only 1% of the shares [Kid sat at a shareholder meeting]
the little guy can be felt as a 5% holder which makes you know him or her a [Kid jumping to hit a Mario coin box]
relatively major player. It also encourages boards to rotate seats [People swapping seats in the boardroom]
gradually, that is if there were seven seats coming up for election while that
1% could feel like 7% which starts to get dangerous in a contentious board and [The people in the boardroom start fighting]
company situation. You can imagine someone who only owns a small part of
the shares outstanding could elect a whole lot of board. Yeah that'd be a [Wooden boards replace the people in suits]
little scary. Well, score one for the little guy... [Kid laughing will an evil face]
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