2020 AGM Season Review - Australia

Corporate Australia seized the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to improve engagement with stakeholders, thus sidestepping a potential surge in dissent and conflict at annual general meetings in 2020. What became obvious as the pandemic continued into the second half of 2020 was that companies with a strong ESG focus turned out to be more resilient and were able to withstand the negative financial and non-financial impacts of COVID-19.

This is among the key findings of the newly released 2020 AGM Season Review from Australia’s leading corporate governance, investor research and engagement firm, Morrow Sodali. The report provides a snapshot of voting outcomes, trends, sentiments and reasons for shareholders voting one way or another, with focus on S&P/ASX300 companies.
 

Through our discussions with large domestic and global investors, we found that many were taking the crisis as an opportunity to really identify which companies take ESG issues seriously, and which simply treat them as a disclosure requirement. 
Jana Jevcakova (Managing Director, Corporate Governance at Morrow Sodali)

WEBINAR
To watch Jana Jevcakova, Andrew Vasey and Kiran Vasantham discuss the key findings from the report and what this means for corporate governance and stakeholder engagement in 2021 and beyond, please click here.

REPORT
To download the full report, please fill in your details below.