More than 20 companies from the DAX family invite you to the annual general meeting on the same day. Shareholder protectors complain that there is calculation behind it. Critical shareholders could thus be kept away from the events.
Deutsche Bank, energy supplier E.ON or real estate group Vonovia – just three of more than 20 companies that invite their shareholders to their annual general meeting on Wednesday. For shareholder associations such as the German Protection Association for Securities Ownership, DSW, it is then: split up. Is the flood of annual general meetings coincidence or calculation?
Klaus Nieding, investor lawyer for DSW, says: “Anyone who thinks evil is a rogue. But that can’t be a coincidence and, in my opinion, it’s also a bit of an escape from the shareholders.”
The criticism: If only a few shareholders can attend the general meetings, there is less of a headwind. The listed corporations see things differently, of course. At the Vonovia real estate group, for example, the date has been fixed for around five years, it said when asked ARD finance department. Telefonica Deutschland and the diagnostics specialist Stratec also refer to a short time window after the annual financial statements.
Businesses want to keep meetings up to date
Christina E. Bannier, Professor of Banking and Finance at the University of Gießen, says: “Here the appointments are piling up, so that many companies then automatically slide into the period April, May, maybe even June for their general meeting.” They could also pull the whole thing back a bit, says Bannier. “But most companies don’t want that so much, because of course they also want to keep the general meeting as up-to-date as possible.”
Where companies used to have to book exhibition halls, many corporations are now inviting their shareholders to virtual meetings. This development is also not well received by investor advocates. There are big differences between the formats, says Christian W. Röhl, investor and proxy for investors himself: “Some still do it in such a way that you have to submit questions three days in advance, like Deutsche Bank. That’s by my standards still a no-go. Other companies are showing that this format can be quite lively, with live questions and live inquiries – almost like in a face-to-face general meeting.”
In the online format, real confrontations or even protest are hardly possible. But regardless of whether it is in the presence or as an online format – Röhl sees possibilities for at least the dates of the general meetings to be better coordinated in the future: “One would have forums for this, such as the Deutsche Aktieninstitut, which is the lobby of the listed stock corporations, exactly could moderate this dialogue.” Just a suggestion to strengthen the rights of shareholders in Germany.