Petrobras' virtual AGM dishes tasty plot lines

摘要

Stormy shareholder assemblies can be seen as one of the bulwarks of Western capitalism, so there have been some concerns that investors may struggle to properly hold directors to account or defend their own interests with the Covid-19 pandemic-driven switch to virtual events. If the online annual general meeting staged by Brazil's Petrobras last week is anything to go by, however, there will be plenty of room for plots, shareholder coups and dramatic outcomes in the virtual format. In a stormy - and often confusing -AGM, a split among entities representing the Brazilian government's controlling bloc opened a breach that resulted in minority shareholders nabbing an extra seat on the company's supervisory board. The breach occurred because BNDESPar - the equity holding arm of Brazil's national development bank - and investment funds tied to the country's national savings bank backed a rebel group seeking a change in the voting format to give shareholders more freedom to vote for individual candidates for the board positions, rather than voting for or against blocs formed beforehand to represent given categories. The rebel group, led by banker Juca Abdalla and several foreign funds, reached the 5% floor needed to trigger the voting change and, taken by surprise, the virtual voting system went into momentary meltdown.