Landmark meeting
Most publicly traded corporations regard annual meetings as a formality, so I was interested to see what Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, with its co-operative tradition, would do at its first meeting of Class B shareholders.
When I toiled for a Calgary daily a millennium ago, I got assigned to cover annual meetings of oil companies, the ones that were considered newsworthy, that is. Unless there was some scandal brewing or a takeover imminent there wasn’t much to write about, unless you get excited about appointment of auditors and motions to approve the annual report.
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Indeed one public relations person told me his colleagues in the industry had an annual pool to see who could pull off the shortest annual meeting.That particular year the winner met all the legal formalities in 12 minutes flat.
Pool delegates have a long tradition of meticulously examining every detail of operations. Even some department heads who think they’ve had a particularly good year are sometimes startled by the grilling they get.
As you’ll know from having read The Western Producer, this meeting of 350 non-voting shareholders took an hour and a half.
President Leroy Larsen and chief executive officer Don Loewen outlined the business year and then a host of written questions were received and answered.
The route followed by the private corporations is easier on the top brass but not nearly as enlightening. It would be a rare occasion when a corporate giant would get more than a corporal’s guard out to an annual meeting.
When you’re facing a CEO who has 10 million votes more than you do, a small shareholder can be excused for feeling intimidated. I wonder how Conrad Black would fare at a meeting of Pool delegates?
