According to industry sources on the 12th, Samsung Electronics has decided to hold the 52nd Samsung Electronics regular shareholders’ meeting held in mid-next month, both offline and online, and is preparing for live online broadcasting. Earlier, the Samsung Compliance Committee recommended that shareholders be held online at the same time, taking into account the reinforcement of shareholder-friendly management and the recent Corona 19 situation. Samsung Electronics accepted this and decided to introduce it this year.
The fact that the online shareholders’ meeting was held at the same time was greatly influenced by the’Donghak Ant Movement’, which led to Samsung Electronics’ minority shareholders exceeding 2 million, becoming the largest ever. According to the Korea Securities Depository, the number of shareholders of Samsung Electronics was 2.15 million,4081 as of the end of last year, the largest ever. Individual minority shareholders amounted to 214,5317, 99.6% of the total. The number of shares held by minority shareholders is 387,192,2801, which is 6.48% of the total.
Samsung Electronics plans to maintain the electronic voting system introduced at the shareholders’ meeting last year. Accordingly, this year, shareholders of Samsung Electronics can vote on the agenda of the shareholders’ meeting without attending the site and view the progress of the shareholders’ meeting online.
It is known that the offline shareholders’ meeting will be held at the Suwon Convention Center, as in last year. Until now, Samsung Electronics has held a shareholders’ meeting at the Seocho office building in Seocho-gu, Seoul, but after the par value split in 2018, the number of minority shareholders surged, and for the first time last year, it held a shareholder meeting at the Suwon Convention Center outside the company building.
Meanwhile, the desire for electronic shareholders’ meetings around the world is rising. This is because the aftermath of the Corona 19 pandemic has made it difficult for hundreds and thousands of shareholders to gather together as before.
Tesla’s 2020 Shareholders’ Meeting was held online only on September 22 last year. Tesla CEO Elon Musk explained the vision of a’half-price battery’ to shareholders who stepped on the stage installed in the parking lot of the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, USA and watched online. In the factory parking lot, only about 240 shareholders selected through a lottery were aboard Tesla cars and cheered for his announcement with car horns.
According to the voting rights consultant ISS, as of May last year, there were 3,900 cases in 69 countries that held electronic shareholders’ meetings. The Asia Corporate Governance Association (ACGA) analyzed 505 regular shareholders’ meetings in 12 Asian countries (top 50 companies by country’s market capitalization) last year, and 36.8% held electronic shareholders’ meetings. The number of companies that held regular shareholder meetings from January to June using Broadridge System, a U.S. electronic shareholder meeting platform provider, increased from 326 in 2019 to 1494 in 2020.
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