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For many companies, annual meetings are just around the corner, and the COVID-19 pandemic has raised all sorts of questions about what they should do and whether a virtual meeting is a viable alternative.

Last week, Lynn blogged about Davis Polk’s memo on planning for coronavirus-related annual meeting developments. Since then, we’ve received memos addressing similar topics – including adding a virtual meeting component or going entirely to a virtual annual meeting – from Freshfields, DLA Piper, Hunton Andrews Kurth, Pepper Hamilton and Dechert. Also check out this Cleary Gottlieb blog. These resources address the relevant securities and corporate law issues, as well as investor relations and logistical considerations.

We touched on some coronavirus-related annual meeting issues in this week’s “Conduct of the Annual Meeting” webcast and will also address them in next week’s “The Coronavirus: What Should Your Company Do Now?” webcast. Meanwhile, we’re posting all sorts of coronavirus-related memos in our “Risk Management” Practice Area.

Proxy Contests: Will COVID-19 Put Them On Ice?

This Sidley memo says that one of the consequences of the coronavirus outbreak may be a decline in proxy contests during the current season. As this excerpt points out, the reason is that given current market volatility, activists may be unwilling to commit to the kind of long-term hold that a successful proxy fight would necessitate:

It is important to understand that if an activist launches a proxy contest to replace directors, an activist must be prepared to remain in the stock for the foreseeable future – at least until the annual shareholder meeting and, if successful in obtaining board seats, at least 6-12 months beyond that. While there are no legal restrictions to the contrary, as a practical matter, an activist cannot initiate a proxy contest and sell or reduce its position shortly afterward.

An activist who does this stands to lose credibility with long-term institutional investors and becomes more susceptible to being portrayed as a “short term” investor in future activism campaigns. It is even more difficult for an activist to exit a stock if an employee of the activist fund, rather than candidates that are at least nominally independent, takes a board seat. Material nonpublic information received by the activist employee in the board room is imputed to the activist fund, thereby restricting the fund’s ability to trade in the stock.

The memo cautions that once the crisis passes, companies should expect activists to return to proxy contests with a vengeance. It notes that 130 proxy contests were launched in 2009, after the financial crisis, and many companies that can hide during a bull market have their vulnerabilities laid bare during a downturn.

Antitakeover: Dual Class & Staggered Boards are Alive & Well in Silicon Valley

Fenwick & West just came out with its annual comparative survey of governance practices among Silicon Valley companies and the S&P 100. One of the things that jumps out at you is that while antitakeover charter provisions may be on the decline in most of corporate America, they’re thriving out west:

– Historically, dual-class capital structures were more prevalent among the S&P 100 companies than they were among the SV 150, but the number of tech companies that have them has risen from 10.9% of the SV 150 in 2017 to 12.7% in 2019), while the percentage of S&P 100 companies with dual class structures has remained steady at about 9% during that same period.

– Staggered boards are also much more common among the tech set than among S&P 100 companies. Classified boards increased from 50.7% of SV 150 companies in 2018 to 52.7% in the 2019 proxy season. That percentage reflects the large number of Silicon Valley IPOs in recent years, but the percentage of companies with staggered boards among the more mature top 15 SV 150 companies increased to 13.3% in the 2019 proxy season, after holding steady at 6.7% for the preceding 4 years. In contrast, only 5% of the S&P 100 had staggered boards in 2019.

Obviously, IPOs that are skewing the Silicon Valley numbers somewhat, but another factor in the greater extent of unfashionable antitakeover provisions in SV 150 charters may also have something to do with the amount of voting power sitting in their boardrooms. The survey reports that directors & officers of SV 150 companies own an average of 9.0% of the equity in their companies, while their counterparts at S&P 100 companies own an average of only 3.5%.

– John Jenkins