to sustainable profitability, and social
responsibility through charitable giving,
resonated with this group, while outside
shareholder advocates cringed. Pressed
by critics on board authority to allocate
corporate profits to charitable causes, co-
founder Ben Cohen explained:
We’ve never taken a formal vote of all
the shareholders, but at our annual
meetings, I usually ask them—just a
show of hands, it’s nonbinding—if
they support the company’s support-
ing the community and giving away
what are really their profits. And
they’re all in favor of it.
The Ben & Jerry’s annual meeting was
part of the company’s branding—achieved
at low expense and producing consider-
able returns.
Meanwhile, in Omaha, Nebraska, War-
ren Buffett began building what would
become the most popular annual share-
holder meeting ever at Berkshire Hatha-
way. In 1975, a dozen attended in an office
cafeteria, but then for three decades added
a digit each—hundreds by 1985, thousands
by 1995 and tens of thousands by 2005.
In 2018, more than 40,000 attended, the
record for a US public company, at the
largest convention center in town. The
Berkshire meeting’s main feature has long
been a six-hour Q&A with Buffett and
Vice Chairman Charlie Munger.
But the Berkshire meeting has evolved
into a three-day weekend extravaganza.
The company has for decades hosted events
on the days surrounding the meeting—a
Friday night ball game, Saturday evening
cookout, Sunday champagne brunch—
and shareholders have added their own
side-meetings, panels and speakers that
alone draw hundreds or thousands. As
recounted in an edited collection of
essays, The Warren Buffett Shareholder, it
is a series of energetic scenes of manager-
owner partnership, a people’s capitalism
the gadflies would love.
Another mighty midwestern town, Fay-
etteville, Arkansas, has been the scene of
the Walmart stockholders’ meeting, most
distinctive because of its conscious focus
on employees. While founder Sam Walton
hosted the first Walmart Stores annual
meeting in 1970 at a coffee shop with
five other people, throughout the 1980s,
the meetings have added special events
and celebrity guests to draw ever-larger
crowds. The venue has moved from the
Gadfly Lewis Gilbert at an annual shareholder meeting.
headquarters auditorium to University of
Arkansas arenas now seating 20,000.
Walmart executives bound onto stage
amid flashes of light and sound, met with
roars of crowd approval. Managers get
the crowd to spell out Walmart, declare
that the store is number one and proclaim
their love of the brand. Though Walmart
remains an economic powerhouse serving
its shareholders well, its identity is in its
employees, which it affectionately refers
to as “associates.” The annual meeting is
their centerpiece.
During this era, the corporate annual
meeting also became a stage for drama.
Many examples appear in a memoir by
Randy Cepuch, based on visits to 50
annual meetings from 2002 to 2006. He
captures poignant moments revealing the
personalities behind corporate cultures:
when Roy Disney and Stanley Gold led the
ouster of Disney CEO Mike Eisner, and
when Sandy Weill ended his amazing run
at the helm of Citigroup to an enraptured
group of applauding shareholders. The
fate of Dow Jones was shaped at its annual
meeting, including a persuasive argument
made by noted value investor Mark Boyar
that the Bancroft family should sell.
Savvy managers today use the annual
meeting to attract shareholders they
desire—especially important for managers
with long time-horizons seeking patient
capital. At an annual meeting of South-
eastern Asset Management, this enabled
Chairman O. Mason Hawkins to boast:
“We have the best shareholders in the
mutual fund business.” The claim has
18 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Fall 2018 | www.MoAF.org
rivals, such as Ruane Cunniff, which runs
the famed Sequoia Fund. It cultivates
intelligent long-term investors, attract-
ing and retaining them in part through
its annual meetings that draws a regular
group of 1,000 in early May to New York’s
Plaza Hotel.
Today and Tomorrow:
The Virtual Meeting?
Since 2010, several large public companies
have held annual shareholders meeting
solely by electronic means, not conven-
ing in a physical location, a so-called
virtual-only meeting. Many had for sev-
eral years supplemented annual meetings
with digital feeds—such as Cisco System
dating to 2005—and most others followed
suit, including Berkshire Hathaway from
2016. But even now only a small fraction
host remote-only annual meetings, amid
controversy.
Authorization to host virtual-only
shareholder meetings was first enacted in
2000 by Delaware corporate law. Today,
most state corporate laws permit the prac-
tice. (Both federal law and stock exchange
rules have tended to defer to state law
on the manner of holding annual meet-
ings.) In the first decade, a smattering of
mostly-smaller companies opted in. They
were led by such names as Ciber, ICU
Medical and Inforte, and followed by the
likes of Adaptec, Herman Miller and UAP
Holding.
During this period, a few big names put
their toe in the water only to retreat under