Are Virtual Shareholder Meetings the Future?

This year Ford's Annual General Meeting was different from the years before, it was held online. But not all shareholders were happy with this decision. However, Ford was not even the first company to take this step. Inforte Corporation was one of the first companies to test the still new concept in 2001. Still, this service is only used by a small number of companies. Even so, some of the companies are well known like HP Inc., NVIDIA or Yelp, to mention only some.

Broadridge Financial Solutions is one of the companies which sell the virtual shareholder meeting services. Between 2010 and 2016 the company was able to increase its customer numbers in the virtual-only segment by 810 percent. The Infographic shows the number of virtual annual general meetings in the U.S. for which Broadridge provided the service. A distinction is made between virtual-only and hybrid forms. In the hybrid form, the physical general meeting also takes place simultaneously.