Shareholder meetings to kick off in March, but corporate watchers expect mundane results

Others like POSCO will hold the meeting on March 10, LG Display on March 16, and Naver and Hyundai Glovis on March 17.

Corporate watchers say that because so many of the meetings are crammed into a single day, shareholders are physically unable to take part in all that they are entitled to. This is in part desired by the companies, watchers say, who would rather pass important or prickly management decisions quickly without allowing a chance for discussion with or opposition by their shareholders.

Electronic voting systems were adopted in 2010 to help shareholders exercise their rights without having to attend, but it has hardly been put to use. According to corporate records, the system is used by only 0.9 percent of shareholders on average.

Shareholders are becoming more important as leading business groups try to navigate through the local and global economic slumps, making impactful decisions affecting profits.  For companies like Samsung Electronics, pending agendas are larger. In November, the tech firm announced it is studying ways to turn itself into a holding company and that the process will take about six months.

The company has since been embroiled in a major political scandal, accused of donating to foundations controlled by a presidential confidante in return for various favors, notably a merger of affiliates that were carried out under terms highly favorable to Samsung.

"If governance reform was to be put to discussion at the shareholders' meeting, the agenda should already have been approved by the board of directors," Lee Sang-heon, an analyst at HI Investment and Securities Co., said. "This year's meeting will probably end with a usual routine -- passing the audit report and approving a dividend and accounting statement."

Some watchers demand law revisions to guarantee active participation by investors, such as requiring all companies to introduce an electronic voting system. They also want to bring out institutional investors through the Stewardship Code, a set of guidelines for them to engage in activities in the interest of their shareholders. The code was adopted in December, but no companies have yet joined it.

"Institutional and retail investors speaking out at shareholders' meetings is in itself a reform of corporate governance," Kim Sang-jo of Solidarity for Economic Reform said.

"In order to push shareholder attendance at the meetings and institutional investors to make themselves heard, we need changes in the system to remove any legal ambiguities." (Yonhap)