Posted on May 5, 2010 - by PanzerGrenadier

Meeting Koh Boon Hwee: My First Annual-General Meeting at DBS

Photo by kwerfeldein

Having started investing in shares since 2003, I finally did what a shareholder is expected to do, that is to attend an annual general meeting and actually vote on the ordinary and special resolutions at the meeting with management and the Board of Directors of the business.

30 April 2010 2.00 P.M. was the Annual General Meeting for DBS group holdings. I have been an on-off investor in this share for a few years but only this time I still had 1 lot after taking profit on another lot for speculative play.

How I ended up at the Annual General Meeting

I happened to receive the annual report while still holding on to DBS and decided I should at least try to attend an annual general meeting of a listed company to find out just what happens at an AGM. What questions would shareholders raise and just what type of people actually invest in DBS and actually bother to attend AGMs?

I also had an “ulterior” motive in that I genuinely wanted to know how listed AGMs were carried out as one of my aspirations is to be a director on a listed company eventually when I am transiting to a different type of career post “retirement”. As I am an Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Internal Auditor, I do have the basic academic and professional experience to qualify to be a member of audit or finance committees and believe this is one development path for me post traditional “retirement”.

The answers to these questions were addressed at what I would call a very interesting session.

Registration

I learnt from attending the AGM that one doesn’t need to pre-register for them. Just appear with your NRIC as identification and the corporate secretariat services company doing the registration will verify your name against the register of shareholders and issue you with the annual report and other voting slip you require relating to the resolution to be passed.

Pre-AGM Briefing by CFO

Prior to the AGM, the CFO Chng Sok Hui gave a briefing on the financial highlights of the DBS group performance and also answered some of the shareholders’ questions. The briefing was fairly well presented and the slides were very clear. However, the shareholders, who consist mostly of retirees and men aged 50 and older were quite sharp in clarifying that the net profit for the year was flat. There were also specific questions on how the scrip dividends would be rounded off to the nearest share or fraction of the share and whether it would be rounded up or down. (Answer is that it would be rounded down to the nearest share). Read more…

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3. Ellipsiz meeting was broadbrush as they have yet to release their results and like Miyoshi…