ANNUAL
SHAREHOLDER
MEETINGS
From Populist
to Virtual
By Lawrence A. Cunningham
and Stephanie Cuba
The 1933 annual meeting of Exxon-
Mobil, then Standard Oil of New Jersey
and among the world’s oldest and larg-
est corporations, was a gathering of five
people at a New Jersey gas station. By
1977, the company’s annual meeting filled
the 2,000-seat Houston Music Hall and
in 2018 still draws thousands to a similar
Dallas venue.
These dramatically different attendance
numbers point us to the history of the
corporate meeting. Chief protagonists are
John and Lewis Gilbert, brothers who
chose fighting for shareholder rights as
their life’s work. Their motives appear in
Lewis Gilbert’s portrayal of the problem in
his 1956 book, Dividend and Democracy:
In 1932, the typical annual meeting,
often tucked away in some remote
rural hideaway, was usually attended
by no more than a silent dispirited
baker’s dozen who listlessly listened to
the mechanical legal jargon by which
insiders re-elected themselves to do as
they pleased.
Through the 1930s, large US corpo-
rations were owned mostly by a small
number of influential banks, financiers
and dynasties, such as Morgan, Rock-
efeller and Vanderbilt. But as the Great
14 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Fall 2018 | www.MoAF.org
Depression stoked suspicions of concen-
trated corporate power, Congress passed
banking, securities and tax laws that fos-
tered diffuse share ownership.
Individuals nationwide came to own
stock in American companies, and the
Gilberts spent five decades advocating for
them. Their legacy of shareholder engage-
ment endures, though the US shareholder
base since 1980 re-concentrated, with ris-
ing ownership by pension funds, mutual
funds and other institutions.
The legacy is relevant to emerging
debates over whether annual meetings
should continue to be held in-person any-
more, or instead solely online, as several
public companies have recently begun
doing. This modern development stirs
debate about the purpose and value of
shareholder meetings. History sheds light
on the stakes.
Shareholders gather ahead of the Berkshire
Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska,
on Saturday, May 5, 2018.