A spotlight on the New Zealand

Overview

During 2024, the aggregate number of shareholder meetings held by our clients remained steady, despite a decline in the number of listed issuers over the course of the year due to de-listing, insolvency and takeovers. There were 93 meetings where MUFG Corporate Markets was involved in the processing or proxy voting and/or the registration and polling at the meeting.

Meeting Format

It is almost 10 years since the first hybrid meeting was held in New Zealand and it has been now well adopted. In the early years, most issuers required rehearsal runs to get their board and executives comfortable with the technology, but this is now the exception rather than the rule.

Approximately 43% of our issuers elect to hold hybrid meetings with the largest issuers typically utilising the hybrid option in line with recommendations made by the NZ Shareholders Association.

Additionally, in situations where there are contentious issues, wide geographical spread of shareholders, or directors accessing the meeting from different global locations, then issuers are offering the wider access that the hybrid option provides.

It should be noted that for smaller issuers and those where financial constraints are a factor, choices are being made to elect either physical or virtual only. Going back to the traditional physical only meeting can remove the cost of audio-visual supplier, platform, and equipment cost whereas “virtual only” removes the requirement of a venue, refreshments, flights and other expenses associated with the meeting. In almost 20% of the meetings, clients used the bespoke meeting room facility of MUFG Corporate Markets to hold their shareholder meetings which we provide free of charge.

This year we saw the number of physical only meetings stay the same at 31% of all meetings held. However, there was a rise in virtual only meetings, up from 15% the year before to 25% in 2024. Upon further analysis, this was driven primarily from companies that had recently de-listed and decided that they did not require physical attendance to be offered, and/ or where a small issuer with no contentious business to vote on, was taking the option of online only.

Shareholder Activism

Shareholder activism was still in play this year, with shareholders using the convenience of attending virtually to ask multiple questions and follow-up questions. This presented some companies with the challenge of fielding large numbers of similar questions, multiple questions from individual holders, and moderating questions for relevancy – often communicating back with the investor directly and taking operational or product questions offline.

Shareholder Engagement

Shareholder engagement at the retail level has changed with the advent of online voting, particularly in the post-COVID-19 era. Typically prior to 2020, shareholders registering and voting at annual meetings comprised 75% of the people present with the residual of visitors, or shareholders who held their shares under custodial holders or proxies. Since 2020, the percentage of people attending physically has significantly dropped to around 25% of the total attendees.

Conclusion

This dramatic reversal in the relative split between physical and virtual attendance is due to key changes in the market.

Since 2020, there has been greater adoption of “standing proxies” authorised by shareholders being held on file and used each time a meeting was held, primarily with NZ Shareholders Association being the proxyholder. A shareholder has the freedom to attend the meeting online as a “visitor” and watch without having to vote.

The other change is the increase in shareholders holding their shares under custodial arrangements or on platforms and apps (such as Sharesies, Hatch, and other micro-investing sites) where they do not appear on the registry.

With these factors above, combined with the improved accessibility of online, it is no surprise that there has been a sea-change shift to less voting at poll-time by individuals directly.

Companies are most likely to hold their shareholder meeting on a Thursday, with nearly one-third of all clients choosing that day. The Next most popular day was a Wednesday at 24% of meetings held falling on that day. The duration of meeting was between one hour and 1.5 hours for nearly a third of all meetings we attended. The longest meeting was around three hours, after which time a cup of tea was definitely deserved by all.