How to Deal with Shareholders

Shareholders are important stakeholders for every company and recent events have shown the risks a company faces in dealing with them. Shareholders are becoming more active and more aggressive, often using their influence to create short-term stock market gains rather than long-term value, or pursuing proxy fights based on their views of good corporate governance and good citizenship. Our expert panel discussed common approaches of shareholders; successful and unsuccessful responses to activist shareholders on a range of issues relating to conducting the annual meeting; proxy disclosure and solicitation issues; and the role of institutional shareholder services.