A FTSE250 Company Secretary writes...
‘How do companies enhance communications with smaller shareholders? Do companies communicate with smaller shareholders more than once a year i.e. other than to send them the Notice of AGM and Annual Report and Accounts?’
Currently we do nothing specific for smaller shareholders, the emphasis for communications is on the larger institutional investors. Smaller shareholders can be regarded as a bit of a hassle that clog up the register and are costly to service, although some companies take the reverse view and try to woo the retail investor. We are considering organising/attending investor events designed for retail investors, but at present we do nothing as regards enhanced communications with smaller shareholders.
We don’t have a formal programme. It’s a question of resources really. We do respond to all retail shareholders queries and we contact them, outside of the AGM cycle, when we have some corporate thing going on such as a sharedealing programme or something like that. We have a large employee shareholder base and we do communicate with them frequently and their voice is represented by employee directors on the subsidiary boards and on the main plc board.