The Annual General Meeting

Abstract

Abstract The annual general meeting of a company has been an established part of the corporate landscape since the passing of the first Companies Act in 1862. The annual general meeting provides shareholders with the opportunity to consider the contents of the company’s annual financial statements, the reports of the directors and auditors, to choose the composition of the board of directors of the company, to appoint or re-appoint the auditors and to question the management about their conduct of the company’s affairs in the previous year. It is the forum at which the shareholders, in companies both large and small, have the opportunity to ‘have their say’. If the concept of shareholder democracy means anything, it is reflected in the obligation of companies to hold an annual general meeting for their shareholders. However, as will be discussed in this chapter, changes of fashion and the impact of modern practicalities have given rise to a new approach to the annual general meeting in recent years, with the result that such a meeting is in the UK only required as a matter of law for public companies and, since the introduction of the Company (Shareholders’ Rights) Regulations 2009, for private companies that