Just buy one share and attend as a shareholder
As per the 1st sentence of the article, it’s less about being there but about asking questions:
Shell will no longer give press conferences when presenting its annual and quarterly results.
Journalists will be allowed to call in and listen but not ask questions
So even when supporting Shell and buying shares to attend, there won’t be a press conference with questions and answers.
This is article is not about a shareholder meeting though. It’s naming the annual and quarterly financial presentations.
Realistically though they will only address the questions from the biggest shareholders.
And instantly create a conflict of interest that undermines your reporting.
It’s not a conflict of interest to report on something you have a financial stake in? Just because the stock is at $60 doesn’t mean you wouldn’t profit if it went to $80.
If only reporters had some way of telling readers about their potential conflicts of interest. Like, I don’t know, telling readers you had to buy shares to participate and report on it? But that just seems to crazy to exist…
I didn’t say it would invalidate their reporting, but even with a disclaimer the conflict of interest is still there and still undermines the article. A report without the conflict of interest is always better.
Is that really worth it, just to go to their shareholder meeting and try to turn it into a mini press conference? I think most professional journalists would say no.
American oil and gas companies ExxonMobil and Chevron also don’t hold press conferences
I mean, I’m sure they’ve thought about this with regards to these other companies, yet we don’t have journalists buying shares to report on them. Maybe I’ve not hit the nail with their exact reasoning, but whatever their reasoning is no one in the industry seems to think it’s a good idea.
Translation: We’re making sooo much money off the backs of the suckers we employ that we’re concerned of the backlash if they found out just how bad we’re screwing them.
Man, making so much money that even the shameless feel ashamed.
Shell’s kind of got a point that the purpose of the shareholder meetings isn’t to create a forum for political activists, but to report to shareholders how the company is doing. I mean, it’s going to be disruptive to them doing that, because they’ve got a finite amount of time for that.
If you buy a share of an oil company specifically because you don’t like oil companies and want to show up at the shareholder meeting and complain about oil companies, the shareholders who are interested in the thing as a business probably aren’t going to appreciate it much.
If shareholders were saying “I don’t agree with the CEO pay package” or something, okay, that’s within the realm of the company’s operations.
I’d also add that if you don’t want oil extraction, Shell isn’t the party to talk to, even via another route than shareholder’s meetings. Shell is gonna do what regulators permit if it makes financial sense for Shell. You aren’t gonna convince Shell otherwise. If you want to say “no crude oil extraction”, then you want to talk to regulators and lawmakers, not to the companies operating within the bounds that they set. Hell, even if you did convince Shell, it’d just mean that another oil company would step in to do the same.
If crude oil extraction causes problems to people other than Shell or Shell customers, then that’s an externality, and internalizing that is what regulators are there for. That’s not the job of companies.
When Shell stops donations to political parties, candidates and all of its lobbying I’ll agree with you.
I’m not sure if we are on the same side, and honestly in this case it doesn’t matter, since you are right: a corporation only has to care about the externalities as much as they are forced to and not even an inkling more than that.
People who think that an enterprise in a free market will respond to any other force than economic force are wasting activism time that could be better used elsewhere.
If you want a corporation to stop performing a socially harmful business, you need to make that business unprofitable.
I agree with your sentiment, but I wouldn’t call activism (and especially not journalism) a wasted effort in that regard. Bringing issues to light is the first step in creating a visible dent in the balance sheets. Public perception shapes consumer behavior to some degree and can put pressure on lawmakers to introduce legislation against harmful conduct. On the other hand, if the general public only hears the company’s side of the story underlining how clean and ethical they are, there will never be any pressure for change.
If you want a corporation to stop performing a socially harmful business, you need to make that business unprofitable.
This is neigh on impossible. I don’t shop at Amazon, but I doubt they even noticed. I try to avoid brands like Nestle but they’re still going.
The last thing I ordered that wasn’t from Amazon was still delivered by Amazon. I was shocked.
