Oecd legal Instruments

permitted by jurisdictions as a means to facilitate and reduce the costs to shareholders of 
participation and engagement. Such meetings should be conducted in a manner that ensures equal 
access to information and opportunities for participation of all shareholders.
Virtual or hybrid (where certain shareholders attend the meeting physically and others virtually) general 
shareholder meetings can help improve shareholder engagement by reducing their time and costs of 
participating. By using virtual platform providers, companies may incur additional costs but also streamline 
shareholders’ access to agendas and related information, and provide a secure infrastructure and more 
efficient means for considering and addressing shareholder comments and questions. However, due care is 
required to ensure that remote meetings do not decrease the possibility for shareholders to engage with and 
ask questions to boards and management in comparison to physical meetings. Some jurisdictions have 
issued guidance to facilitate the conduct of remote meetings, including for handling shareholder questions, 
responses and their disclosure, with the objective of ensuring transparent consideration of questions by 
boards and management, including how questions are collected, combined, answered and disclosed. Such 
guidance may also address how to deal with technological disruptions that may impede virtual access to 
meetings.
Many companies rely on technology vendors to manage remote participation. When choosing service 
providers, it is important to consider that they have the appropriate professionalism as well as data handling 
and digital security capacity to support the conduct of fair and transparent shareholder meetings, with 
technical and organisational security measures in place for each of the processing operations carried out by 
virtue of their service, especially concerning personal data, which require stricter security measures. Such 
processes should allow for the verification of shareholders’ identity through secured authentication of 
attendees and ensure equal participation as well as the confidentiality and security of votes cast prior to the 
meeting.