The main research question addressed in this paper concerns the relationship between the attendance of annual shareholder meeting and the company performance in terms of profitability. In particular, it is intended to highlight some elements that can be interpreted as the attendance in the shareholder meetings itself (for example, the number of shareholders present at the shareholder meeting, the share of authorized capital attending the shareholder meeting, the duration of the shareholder meeting). Following this analysis, the attention is devoted to the relationship between corporate performance and the shareholder meetings participation (one of the possible governance mechanisms available to monitor the activity carried out by the company management). This issue has recently been proposed at the European institutional level in the Directive 2017/828/EU (Shareholders’ Directive), adopted in Italy with the D. Lgs. 49/2019, which considers that the involvement of shareholders in the corporate governance of listed companies “is one of the levers that can help improve the financial and non-financial performance of companies, including as regards environmental, social and governance factors, in particular as referred to in the Principles for Responsible Investment, supported by the United Nations”. We analyze the annual general meeting convened for the adoption of the financial statements. Empirically, the study uses the minutes of the meetings of a sample of Italian listed companies held in 2017 and 2018 on the occasion of the adoption of the financial statements for the 2016 and 2017 fiscal period respectively. To analyse the relationship between corporate profitability and participation in shareholder meetings, we carry out a multivariate analysis using a linear regression model (OLS). The model alternately has ROE and ROA as dependent variables, while among the independent variables, we selected some characteristics that can be interpreted as the attendance in the shareholder meetings itself. The main results show a positive relationship between the share of authorized capital attending the annual shareholder meetings and the level of corporate profitability of Italian listed companies.
KEYWORDS: Shareholder Meeting, corporate profitability, shareholder democracy
