Shareholders want SEC policy for AGMs on Youtube

Against the backdrop of low turnout of shareholders at company Annual General Meetings (AGMs) shareholders, under the aegis of Proactive Shareholders Association of Nigeria (PROSAN) has called on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to formulate a policy that will compel quoted companies in Nigeria to package the proceedings of their AGM on the social media channel YouTube for easy online accessibility by all stakeholders.

PROSAN the Nigerian representative in the World Federation of Investors (WFI) stated that this will help develop the Nigeria capital market to meet global standards.

The National Coordinator of PROSAN, Mr. Oderinde Taiwo, stated that one of the demands of sustainable good corporate governance is the disclosure of vital information to shareholders which are always discussed among other matters on the floors of the AGM of companies.

According to him, “By implication if there is any way such proceedings can be assessed by these shareholders after such AGM, it will be a move towards positive direction”.

In his words “We believe that compelling companies to use YouTube at AGM will also help make the work of SEC easier in the area of monitoring of activities of proceedings at meetings. In addition, all intended foreign investors can have firsthand information about the growing capital market via this device.”

The group also lamented that “We have observed that less than 2 per cent of the shareholders of quoted companies attend their companies’ AGM globally.”

The shareholders’ group further stated that the continuous delay in the appointment of ministers would continue to affect the capital market as investors need to know the policy direction of the economy.

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According to Taiwo “Both foreign and local investors will only invest in a market if they know the policy direction. You can see that immediately the new president for Nigeria emerged after the 2015 election, the stock market moved up and now the market has been going down because of the uncertainty caused by continued delay in the appointment of ministers and policies announcement.”

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