Voting Rights: Management Troubles

voting rights: These days, attention is focused on the roles played by major shareholders such as institutional and foreign investors, whose exercise of their voting rights sway the approval of management proposals, according to The Japan Times. In this situation, individual shareholders should also take their roles seriously. In the past, what often drew people's attention to such meetings was the presence of sokaiya racketeers who owned a few shares in the companies so they could attend and extorted money from the management in return for not making any trouble. These people mostly remain mute at the meetings of the companies whose shares they have bought, except when the firms are embroiled in well-publicized scandals or management troubles. However, they should realize that shareholders meetings are not just annual ceremonies but provide good opportunities for them to evaluate the management of the firms and prod them to improve their performance. Most of these shareholders are believed to own stakes in the companies either for dividend payments or capital gains when the shares go up. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.