Saturday, January 12, 2019

Top Tips On Improving Shareholder Communications

By Linda Russell


If one manages a big corporation, then he definitely will not be able to ignore the presence of big time investors and shareholders who will participate in company policy crafting. Of course, with all the shareholders present, it is not surprising if there would be some tension between the big number of investors and the board of directors. It is up to the board, specifically the corporate secretary to establish proper shareholder communications to ease the tension.

For those in charge of handling shareholders, the first thing that one has to do is ensure transparency. In order to do this, one has to be able to identify all the shareholders to the board of directors, just for the sake of transparency. After all, shareholders will already be able to know who the board of directors are, so it is only fair that the board of directors have the same information.

Now, do take note that not all shareholders have voting power. There are investors that are just there to earn money and do not really participate in the direct management of the company. So in order to have a clearer and more united vision, one has to talk to the voting shareholders and unify them with the existing management and board of directors.

After communicating with all the voting investors, it is very important to make sure that all of them have the same direction, which is to make the company grow. While there are some investors that have higher voting rights than others, it is important that everyone still be on the same page. If ever there are problems, they have to be addressed one by one.

Of course, not all of the concerns need to be noted because only a handful of specific problems need to be solved. After all, shareholder meetings are usually made in order to change big company policies that would really affect the business. That is why it is the job of the corporate secretary to set up agendas for the meetings so that only relevant problems will be addressed.

As mentioned above, an agenda has to be set so that all of the shareholders are on the same page. Now, when crafting the agenda, the corporate secretary has to very specific about the problems that have to be tackled so that the meeting does not deviate into something outside of the specified topics. As continuously mentioned above as well, tackle all the concerns of each investor related to the agenda.

Of course, this does not mean one needs to do all of that on his or her own. There are proxy advisors who can help. They can analyze all shareholder data and profiles. They can also analyze all shareholder voting powers and processes to help corporate secretaries control the situation.

For those who are in charge of facilitating and keeping the shareholders in the room, then make sure to follow some of these tips. Especially for large corporations, controlling the number of shareholders is going to be very difficult. For this reason, one has to know exactly how to do it otherwise things will definitely spiral out of control.




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