When tenant Laura Säckl gets angry, she wants to go public. A few weeks ago, a heating bill fluttered into her house, leaving her speechless: Four months ago she moved into an apartment owned by the real estate group Vonovia, and now she is supposed to pay 1,500 euros. “I don’t know how to do it,” says Säckl in a video. She wants to submit the two-minute film together with other tenants about a shareholder for Vonovia’s virtual shareholder meeting. The entire board should see it there, including company boss Rolf Buch.
However, Säckl’s message should not reach many other interested parties this Wednesday. The appointment calendars of some German shareholders are particularly tight on this day: 30 German stock corporations are holding their annual general meetings at the same time, at which the company directors have to face the votes of the shareholders. From Deutsche Bank to the energy company Eon, the housing giant Vonovia, they all have their investor meetings scheduled for this Wednesday – right down to the Kulmbacher brewery. Critical investors find this unusual concentration of appointments very unpleasant: is there actually an intention on the part of the corporations behind the accumulation in the calendar?
At corporate headquarters, the communicators try not to give this impression in the first place. If you ask the real estate group Vonovia about the unusual annual general meeting inflation on Wednesday of this week, the ready-to-print answer comes after just six minutes. Vonovia has already scheduled all general meetings up to 2025, in July 2018. “We have no insight into the scheduling of other companies,” says Vonovia spokeswoman Silke Hoock. Rather, the appointment calendar of one’s own managers is decisive.
Do the companies no longer want to have anything to do with their co-owners?
In the offices of the German Association for the Protection of Securities (DSW), they still have to deal with the conflict of dates, several experts have posted in the office. On the one hand, investor advocate Jella Benner-Heinacher listens at the real estate group Vonovia, on the other hand her colleague at Eon. “We have to be pretty creative this year,” says the investor advocate on the phone, while Vonovia’s Annual General Meeting roars over the loudspeakers in the background.
In view of the concentration of dates, Benner-Heinacher can hardly believe it is a coincidence: “When companies expect a turbulent general meeting, they naturally speculate on this accumulation of dates in May,” says the investor advocate, who can be critical of private investors. The agglomeration is particularly interesting because the scandalous Deutsche Bank also held its shareholders’ meeting on Wednesday this week. Other Dax sizes know only too well that the bank date for large fund companies and investor protection groups is just as much a mandatory date as it is for non-governmental organizations that used to like to demonstrate outside the gates of the general meeting. Other Dax companies could have been tempted to hide in the media slipstream of Deutsche Bank. “All particularly active shareholders go to Deutsche Bank on such a day,” says the investor advocate.
After all, the corporations know that many large fund companies are worth billions, but can often only send three or four fund managers to investor meetings. Investor associations such as DSW have around 70 volunteers who, if in doubt, can also cover general meetings of small companies. “Even in May there are still days without a general meeting,” says fund manager Vanda Rothacker from the cooperative investment company Union Investment. “Why haven’t the companies postponed their events?”
For years, stock experts have had an impression that may seem surprising: many companies no longer wanted to have much to do with their owners. After all, private investors as shareholders are nothing more than shareholders in a company. Or more simply: co-owner.
More than half of the Dax companies only hold the meetings virtually
It is not only the wondrous accumulation of appointments that gives investors this impression, but also the trend towards virtual general meetings. As a means of preventing infection in the corona pandemic, investors should not sit in hundreds in exhibition halls at general meetings, but should be isolated in front of their computers. But instead of being an emergency exit, many DAX companies have now chosen the virtual format as the standard. Of the 40 companies in the Frankfurt leading index, 28 companies are holding their shareholder meetings purely virtually this year.
Many companies are promoting the new digital format as a triple advantage for investors. Firstly, the digital general meeting is an innovative step into the technological future, secondly, it is a climate-friendly measure because investors simply save themselves the journey. And thirdly, a way to enable more shareholders to participate on their home PC.
However, many of the arguments are in vain: According to an analysis by the investment advisor Georgeson, the participation rate has hardly changed over the past five years and has remained constant at around 65 percent. And secondly, the executive floors of companies can shield themselves from critical speakers much better. “Some critical video speeches are simply hidden in a subfolder of the virtual online portal, but not shown publicly,” complained investor advocate Benner-Heinacher, for example. How a board reacts mischievously to criticism or whether investors from the stands heat up the mood with heckling can no longer be felt in the virtual format. “Some companies even have the approval that the entire supervisory board no longer has to be physically present,” says fund manager Vanda Rothacker.
While many companies in France and Spain have returned to the annual general meeting in person or in hybrid formats, many investors in Germany have to be content with the virtual version. “Things aren’t going smoothly,” says Rothacker, “and sometimes even worse than in previous years.” Sometimes the stream breaks off in the middle, sometimes a request to speak can only be made after consultation with the IT department of the digital portal provider, at the tourism group Tui the server even went down.
Compared to Japan, however, these are all luxury problems, where the concentration of appointments at the general meetings has taken on extreme proportions. For decades, several thousand stock exchange companies have met there on the same day. Previously, blackmailers with small blocks of shares had regularly announced unrest and critical questions, since then the problem has been solved in a Japanese way.