UK
M&S launches campaign to get more shareholders to vote at AGM

Daniel Woolfson
Tue, 27 June 2023 

M&S self checkout till

Marks & Spencer has begun an effort to help retail investors vote at its AGMs in hope of boosting “shareholder democracy”, amid mounting political concern over the apparent decline of the stock market.

The supermarket has launched a pilot project to help nominee shareholders – people who own shares indirectly through trading platforms – have more of a voice in how the company is run.

Retail investing surged in popularity during the pandemic. However, many digital platforms used to trade shares do not allow investors access to the same lines of communication because the shares are not technically held in their own name.


At the same time, the number of shareholders attending annual company meetings has plummeted, according to recent research by the Quoted Companies Alliance (QCA), falling around 55pc in 2022. QCA said in many cases this was because shareholders did not want to travel long distances to get to them.

Archie Norman, chairman at M&S and a former Conservative MP, said: “We believe that shareholder democracy matters because in a free enterprise society people need to feel they are informed and have a say in the businesses they own.

“Nominees make up 40pc of the market and investor platforms are growing, so unless we act, the connection between companies and private shareholders will be lost. However, people own their shares, they have a right to have a say and hold their boards to account”.

Some 29pc of M&S shareholders voted against M&S’s remuneration last year after departing chief executive Steve Rowe was awarded a £1.6m bonus, which more than doubled his overall pay package.

The Government has launched a string of initiatives and reforms intended to revive corporate and public interest in the stock market. They include measures meant to encourage major UK pension funds to put more money into shares, reforms to listing rules to entice more flotations and a review of ways to boost retail investing.

The City minister Andrew Griffith has labelled it a “come back, Sid” campaign in reference to the British Gas privatisation of the 1980s in which many bought shares for the first time.

M&S has partnered with the retail share trading platform Interactive Investor for the trial.

Interactive Investor chief executive Richard Wilson said: “Millions of votes are going to waste, and AGM attendance is close to extinction. That’s bad for shareholder democracy and bad for UK corporate health.”

M&S started conducting its annual meetings digitally in 2020 and said this had led to higher participation compared with in-person meetings.

The retailer has also backed a petition to modernise the Companies Act so that all shareholders have the right to information on companies they invest in, which has gained over 4,000 signatures so far.