Voting at annual general shareholder meetings (AGMs) has been shown to be valuable. This makes perfect sense as voting gives shareholders a say on important corporate decisions, such as the composition of the board of directors and the approval of mergers and acquisitions. It also enables shareholders to express their support or dissent of the current management. Surprisingly though, voter turnout at AGMs across the world is relatively low with an average of slightly less than 60 percent of voting shares. Nevertheless, there is variation across countries with voter turnout ranging from a low of 41 percent in New Zealand to a high of 100 percent in Cyprus. In addition, the average approval rates for management-initiated proposals range between 84 percent and 100 percent, indicating that shareholders are less likely to show dissent to the firm’s management in some countries compared to others. What explains these variations across countries? ... Read more
I haven't posted any of these corporate governance case studies for a while. As the updated version of my corporate governance textbook is about to be published on 11 March 2018, I thought it was a good time to investigate the corporate governance of another interesting company. The company I have chosen is the Daily Mail and General Trust Plc ( DMGT Plc ), a UK company. This is a media company which owns a.o. the tabloid The Daily Mail and the free newspaper Metro . It also has a holding in Euromoney Institutional Plc and Zoopla . An example of a Daily Mail front page An example of a Metro front page I chose DMGT Plc as it is not your run-of-the-mill UK stock-market listed Plc. The typical example of a UK exchange-listed corporation would be a Plc with dispersed ownership and weak control (see Section 3.3 of my textbook International Corporate Governance or its updated version Corporate Governance. A Global Perspective )....
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