Conduct of Polls
Total Polling
As a result of the 225 virtual AGMs held for listed entities, polling was high across all indices - 100% in the S&P/ASX100 & 200 and 97.66% in the S&P/ASX201+.
All Link Group clients in the S&P/ASX100 held a virtual meeting in 2020 and as a result of this, all resolutions were put to poll at each of these meetings.
Polling Trends in 2020
AGM Shareholder Attendance
Percentage of shareholders attending AGMs
Not surprisingly, with the pandemic and the large number of virtual AGMs, AGM attendance was only 0.08% of holders attending meetings across all indices and across both physical and virtual meetings. Down from 0.19% in 2019.






Meeting Attendance
The pandemic impacted the ability to hold a physical AGM so the majority of AGMs in 2020 were held virtually. This impacted the number of holders in attendance.
Visitors outnumbered holders for a few reasons including employees logging into their company AGM. A number of holders also logged in to view the AGM but did not register for a voting card.
Meeting Duration
The majority of meetings lasted between 1/2 hour and 1 1/2 hours compared to 1 and 2 hours in 2019. Virtual meetings tend to take less time on average than a physical meeting which resulted lower duration times.
Months in which meetings and ballots were held
In addition to AGMs, Link Group facilitated scheme meetings, extraordinary meetings, ballots, creditor meetings and more. In 2020 we facilitated 771 of these additional meetings, up from 80 in 2019. This was partly due to several organisations approaching us to run a virtual meeting for them due to COVID-19 restrictions as well as new requirements for superannuation funds to run an annual meeting.
November continues to be the busiest month with the majority of AGMs held at this time in conjunction with other projects.
Month | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
January | 11 | 10 | 17 | 1 | 10 |
February | 15 | 26 | 18 | 11 | 13 |
March | 16 | 13 | 15 | 16 | 12 |
April | 24 | 12 | 22 | 24 | 23 |
May | 63 | 84 | 76 | 71 | 48 |
June | 45 | 29 | 16 | 27 | 17 |
July | 45 | 17 | 19 | 16 | 16 |
August | 34 | 33 | 15 | 20 | 19 |
September | 42 | 28 | 40 | 21 | 20 |
October | 126 | 112 | 108 | 109 | 99 |
November | 289 | 297 | 331 | 298 | 292 |
December | 61 | 30 | 30 | 18 | 30 |
Totals | 711 | 691 | 707 | 632 | 599 |