Looking forward to an exciting congress season with a group of stocks with dispersed shareholders

Giving cash but shareholders still do not attend the general meeting of shareholders, businesses with dispersed shareholder structures are launching a new solution of drawing large-value prizes.

Giving cash but shareholders still do not attend the general meeting of shareholders, businesses with dispersed shareholder structures are launching a new solution of drawing large-value prizes.

"Prize" for shareholders attending the general meeting of shareholders

For businesses with a dispersed shareholder structure, organizing an annual general meeting of shareholders becomes a difficult problem, requiring multiple meetings. Due to the difficulty of organizing a general meeting of shareholders, many businesses have failed to approve their business plans early in the year.

This is expected to repeat itself in the upcoming general meeting season when the shareholder structure of many businesses with a "tradition" of difficulty in organizing the first general meeting of shareholders has not changed much.

Ho Chi Minh City Infrastructure Investment Joint Stock Company (CII, code CII) is planning to seek shareholders' approval for investing/participating in the bidding to select investors for the Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong - My Thuan Expressway Expansion Investment Project with a total investment capital of up to VND 38,693 billion and approving the plan to issue two bond packages with a maximum total value of up to VND 4,500 billion.

However, due to concerns about the fragmented shareholder structure, for the first time, CII launched a lucky draw program for shareholders attending the General Meeting of Shareholders, with a prize structure including cash up to 300 million VND and other prizes such as iPhone 16 Pro Max 256 Gb, 1 tael of gold...

CII is not the first enterprise to launch a lucky draw program. Bamboo Capital Group Joint Stock Company (code BCG) launched a similar program at the April 2024 General Meeting of Shareholders, with the participation rate of shareholders reaching 52.9% of the total number of voting shares and the General Meeting was successfully held.

It is known that before officially launching the "reward" program for shareholders attending the General Meeting of Shareholders, CII had repeatedly failed to organize the General Meeting due to the fact that the number of shareholders attending did not meet the minimum ratio, despite launching cash gratitude programs if shareholders attended the General Meeting directly or authorized members of the Organizing Committee.

Mr. Le Quoc Binh, General Director of CII once shared: “It is really difficult to successfully organize a congress after many failures. The cost of sending invitation letters to shareholders alone is up to 1 billion VND for each congress, the cost is extremely expensive and at the next congress, we can organize a lucky draw, worth several hundred million VND to attract more shareholders”.

Many businesses continue to have a dispersed shareholder structure.

At LDG Investment Joint Stock Company (code LDG), the major shareholder since listing in 2015 is Dat Xanh Group, owning 41.5% of charter capital, then continuously divesting capital. Notably, former Chairman Nguyen Khanh Hung continuously reduced his ownership to below 5% in June 2023. Since then, the Company no longer has major shareholders, 100% of charter capital belongs to small shareholders owning less than 5% of charter capital.

With business plummeting, former Chairman Nguyen Khanh Hung in trouble with the law and limited cash, LDG has continuously failed to attract shareholders and its General Meeting of Shareholders has not been able to be held for many years.

Construction Development Investment Corporation (DIC Corp, code DIG), after many unsuccessful attempts to organize the General Meeting of Shareholders, in 2024, has proposed an initiative to organize in-person combined with online meetings so that individual investors everywhere can participate, increasing the chance of a successful organization compared to the previous year. In particular, this enterprise also launched a program to give cash equivalent to the amount of shares held to shareholders attending the General Meeting.

However, the 2024 General Meeting of Shareholders of DIC Corp only met the required percentage at the last minute at 4:35 p.m. on April 26 (the meeting started at 1:30 p.m.), with the percentage of shareholders attending reaching 50.24% of the total number of voting shares attending, only 0.24% higher than the minimum percentage.

In fact, in 2024, after the incident of the late Chairman Nguyen Thien Tuan's death, leading to the transfer of stock ownership from the late Chairman to his son Nguyen Hung Cuong and his wife Le Thi Ha Thanh, DIC Corp did not have any new major shareholders. By the end of 2024, Mr. Nguyen Hung Cuong and his mother owned 16.96% of the charter capital, while the remaining 83.04% of the charter capital belonged to small shareholders owning less than 5% of the charter capital.

Similarly, CEO Group Joint Stock Company (code CEO), in 2024, must also hold the second General Meeting of Shareholders to reach the rate of 34.22% of the total number of voting shares attending. In 2024, CEO did not record transactions of major shareholders, there were still two major shareholders, Chairman Doan Van Binh and Truong Thuan Trading and Investment Company Limited, owning about 27.16% of charter capital, the remaining 72.84% of charter capital belongs to small shareholders owning less than 5% of charter capital.

Thus, the dispersed shareholder structure continues to be a challenging problem for businesses as they prepare to enter the general meeting season of shareholders in early 2025, and the solution of drawing prizes with large values is expected to be a new policy, urging many businesses to apply it in the near future.

Source: https://baodautu.vn/don-cho-mua-dai-hoi-soi-dong-voi-nhom-co-phieu-phan-tan-co-dong-d239730.html