BERKSHIRE Hathaway's latest annual general meeting (AGM) venue featured an adjoining 194,300 sq ft hall that opened a day earlier and displayed products from the company's subsidiaries.
Berkshire's chief executive Warren Buffett and vice-chairman Charlie Munger also spent five hours answering questions from shareholders ("Buffett marks 50 years at Berkshire with 5-hour dialogue"; May 4).
Our local AGMs pale in comparison, judging from the numerous ones I recently attended.
Some do not even have any presentation on the company and go straight to the question-and-answer session or polling. Some bigger companies, such as Keppel Reit and Sembcorp Marine, stated in their annual reports that they conduct site visits for investors. But when I made requests to do so, these were either rejected or ignored.
Quarterly or half-yearly briefings for many companies are also restricted to analysts and institutional investors.
Big companies should pay more attention to retail investors, especially when they claim to have done so in their annual reports.
On the positive side, it is the smaller companies that are actively engaging their shareholders.
Companies such as CEI Contract Manufacturing, Rickmers Maritime and mm2 Asia went beyond doing just the minimum. Their hard work deserves commendation.
More can be done by locally listed companies to educate and engage the local investment community. Shareholders put their money into buying a stake in a real company and not just a ticker-listed firm on the stock exchange, to be bought and sold within a short period of time.
No doubt some of the shareholders might have different agendas for attending AGMs, but companies should not let a small group of investors discourage them.
Shareholders should also respect the management and do their homework beforehand, and refrain from asking questions for which answers can be easily found in the annual reports.
Alan Ng Soon Hock
