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Shareholders keep indifferent to shareholders’ meetings
Analysts have pointed out a lot of problems in shareholders’ meetings which now prove to be the burning issues in the shareholders’ meeting season.
Shareholders’ indifference
Two days before the annual shareholders’ meeting, Do Van Trac, General Director of Sacom, when talking with the local press, called on shareholders to have a responsibility to the company. The number of invitation letters to the shareholders’ meeting which represented more than 35% of total stakes might make the meeting impossible.
Trac’s worries became realistic. The number of shareholders attending the meeting on March 20 was just big enough to represent more than 51% of stakes. Trac said that “Shareholders prove to be overly indifferent to their benefit.”
He added that the absence of many shareholders means that Sacom has to reorganize the shareholders’ meeting, which will cause the company to waste money and time to other shareholders.
Two weeks ago, Tribeco, a drink company, organized the annual shareholders’ meeting. The invitation letter wrote that the meeting would begin at 8:30am, but only several shareholders attended at that time. Some more shareholders arrived later, raising the total number of shareholders attending the meeting to 36. However, luckily, the meeting was still organized with the participation of big shareholders like Kinh Do and Uni-President.
Meanwhile, Tribeco needs the enthusiasm of small shareholders as well. However, they kept indifferent to the shareholders despite a lot of burning questions.
Prior to that, the extraordinary shareholders’ meeting of the Bach Tuyet Cotton Company only took place after the third invitation. The problem was that the stock market fell down and the company’s business performance was bad, which made shareholders too tired to attend the shareholders’ meeting.
The way of organizing meetings
The agenda of the 2008 shareholders’ meeting of the East Asia Bank stipulated that the board of directors of the bank only gave answers to shareholders’ questions submitted in written documents.
At the shareholders’ meeting of Sacombank, the board of directors only gave answers to five questions from shareholders. Similarly, at the shareholders’ meeting of VF1 and VF4, shareholders needed to write down their inquiries on paper before sending them to the organization board.
The requirements set by the organization boards prove to be strange with regard to the Article No. 79 of the Enterprise Law, which says that shareholders have the right to attend and express themselves at a shareholders’ meeting and undertake the right for direct voting or voting through representatives.
A lot of small shareholders have expressed their dissatisfaction to the said way of organizing meeting, saying that this lacks the transparency in organization. With the requirement on writing down questions on paper, shareholders are not sure if the question to which the board of directors answered to could represent shareholders’ questions.
Businesses’ boards of directors always promise that it will collect questions and give written answers on websites. However, analysts have pointed out that they are still ‘owed’ answers to the questions raised in previous shareholders’ meetings.
Press not welcomed
Only the reporters in the list of guests could attend Tribeco’s shareholders’ meeting. The organizers of the VF1 and VF4 shareholders’ meeting also restricted the participation of the press.
In fact, a lot of shareholders cannot attend the shareholders’ meetings due to many reasons, including the geographical positions. Therefore, a lot of shareholders get information from newspapers. In previous years, reporters could still attend the meeting even when they were not invited. However, the situation seems to be different this year in comparison with the previous year.
VietNamNet, DTCK
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