Our Company only shareholders with at least 25% of Company shares to call a special meeting, whereas Delaware law provisions allow shareholders holding 10% of outstanding shareholder to call such meetings. A meaningful shareholder right to call a special meeting is a way to bring an important matter to the attention of both management and shareholders outside the annual meeting cycle. This is important because there could be 15-months between annual meetings.
Currently, 67% of S&P 500 companies allow shareholders to call a special meeting. Well over half of S&P 1500 companies also allow shareholders this right.
According to Proxy Insight’s “Resolution Tracker,” between May 2019 and August 2020 the topic of providing shareholders a right to call a special meeting won 57.5% at Electronic Arts, 70.2% at Sonoco Products, 52.3% at Verizon Communications, 97.3% at SPAR Group, and 78.9% at FleetCor Technologies.
Large funds such as Vanguard, TIAA-CREF, BlackRock and SSgA Funds Management, Inc. (State Street) support the right of shareholders to call special meetings. For example, BlackRock includes the following in its proxy voting guidelines: “[S]hareholders should have the right to call a special meeting…”
We urge the Board to join the mainstream of major U.S. companies and establish a right for shareholders owning 20% of our outstanding common sock [sic] to call a special meeting.