How To Improve Shareholder Communications

| Friday, January 11, 2019
By Linda Russell


Managing shareholders is always a big headache for the management of the company because investors all have their own views on how to fix certain situations. That is why they would usually get into heated arguments with the board of directors and other investors with opposing views. It is up to the corporate secretary to make sure that shareholder communications go smoothly during meetings to ensure that there is no mistrust among all parties.

In order to have better and more transparent communication between shareholders and investors, the first thing that one has to do is make sure that the board of directors know all the investors. Usually, it would be the board of directors and the investors that would have tension because of disagreements in company policy. So the first thing for the corporate secretary to do is identify the shareholders and determine what their goals and vision are for the company.

After identifying the shareholders, it is important to take note which one of them have the power to vote. Not all of them opt to have voting powers because they just want to get the capital gains and the dividends from holding the stock. With that in mind, it is very important to know who has voting powers so that they know who to call upon.

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.

Having shareholders under one roof is a difficult job because of different minds that may oppose each other. It is the job of the board to streamline everything in order to unite the board and push the company forward. The only way to do that is to practice good shareholder relations and also effective communications.




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