Plans to allow listed firms in the UK to hold online-only AGMs would be detrimental to the ability of shareholders to engage with companies, ShareAction CEO Catherine Howarth warned in a speech in London yesterday.
Howarth said asking questions of board directors at in-person AGMs had proved crucial to an investor campaign coordinated by the sustainability-focused charity to improve the wages of contracted cleaning staff at UK banks.
She said the potential disappearance of in-person AGMs “would be a very bad development” for relationships between companies and shareholders, noting that it would accelerate a recent trend in investor engagement which had tended to favour “form over signal, and activity over impact”.
Howarth also said the increasing use of virtual AGMs in the US “has been a disaster” for dialogue. “Awkward questions are simply being ignored,” she added.
Changes to the rules around the AGMs of UK-listed firms are set to be included in legislation to overhaul the audit system, including the introduction of a new regulator. In May, the government said it expected to “clarify the legality” of virtual AGMs in a long-delayed audit and corporate governance bill.
According the Financial Times, more than 60 members of parliament asked the government this week to accelerate the bill, which would also force the ‘big four’ audit firms to share audits of large firms with smaller competitors and categorise the largest private firms as ‘public interest entities’.
HSBC and Barclays now pay the UK living wage to cleaners employed at its offices contracted via third-party agencies. ShareAction is working with investors to encourage large listed UK-based retailers to follow suit, including via resolutions filed at their2025 AGMs.
Howarth was speaking at an event focused on investor engagement for charities held by CCLA, at which the asset manager unveiled its new Better World Engagement Framework.
