Virtual AGMs & IR: Close encounters

“We are going to take these next few days and we are going to deliver an interactive experience like no other: 16-foot-high screens, 50 feet wide, 180 degrees on one side, 180 degrees on the other. People can clap and applaud; we can hear them and respond to them in real-time.”

This is how, in his own words, motivational speaker Tony Robbins goes virtual. Does even a sliver of this high intensity, media-rich offering belong in private equity as managers look for ways to improve audience engagement in virtual annual general meetings (AGMs)?

As it stands, the apex of interactivity at these events is a live Q&A. But the most telling insights at a physical AGM often come away from the stage: a chance encounter with one of the private equity firm’s junior associates over coffee; an in-depth discussion with a portfolio company CEO during dinner; watching how members of the investment team interact with each other, and perhaps with the wait staff as well. LPs feed it all into their assessments of a manager.

Opportunities for informal engagement are woven into the fabric of meetings. Permira, for example, books tables at a dozen restaurants across London, sends combinations of employees, advisors, service providers and LPs to each one, and requests that they talk about anything except work. 

There are various accounts of managers shipping beverages to AGM participants to try to ease the awkwardness during designated online cocktail hours. For the most part, though, the social elements of a physical meeting are not being transferred to a virtual one. Even arranging an informal catchup with an investment professional on the sidelines of a virtual AGM is problematic.

“Everyone starts off asking about COVID-19, how it’s going working from home, and then you ask them a question about their deal pipeline and suddenly it becomes a formal question,” says Pamela Fung, a managing director at Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners. “It’s not the same as catching up with someone in an actual hallway. The conversation is different.”

Public vs private

COVID-19 has proved a boon for companies that provide technology platforms for meetings. Lumi expects to service 3,000 AGMs in more than 35 countries this year. A majority will be fully virtual. Eighteen months ago, more than 90% were physical – the rest were hybrid – and Lumi was mainly handling real-time voting and polling. Board management software specialist Azeus Convene didn’t offer a virtual AGM product until five months ago but claims to have facilitated 200-plus meetings.

However, these platforms are primarily designed for AGMs held by listed companies, which means the priorities are different. Accessibility and participant authentication, security, round-the-clock support, zero-latency video, and live voting are among the functions most readily referenced.

Richard Taylor, CEO of Lumi, categorizes meetings as AGM and AGM-like. Clients in the former are listed businesses with meetings governed by local company law; the latter is more likely to comprise industry associations than private equity firms.

“There are conferences that are about trying to engender interaction between people for sales reasons or general business relationship building,” Taylor explains. “Many of the AGMs we do are more about getting business done. They are legally driven or constitutionally driven and the key output is that decisions are taken fairly and in line with the statutes.”

While private equity firms might be legally bound to hold AGMs, content and structure are largely the product of common sense and tradition. Voting seldom happens. Potential legal ramifications of accidentally disenfranchising minority shareholders through technical slip-ups are not a consideration.

Yap Jia Rern, Asia-based business development and partnerships manager at Azeus, observes that the limited number of private equity clients she has worked with tended to be conservative, wanting all the content set out in advance. “Some hold smaller, pre-AGM sessions for more interaction, but most take the easy way out,” she says. “If they can avoid doing it, they would rather not do it.”

The virtual menu

Airmeet, an Asia-focused virtual events platform that mostly works with small businesses on marketing activities and with educators where interaction is essential to what they do, offers a snapshot of where technology is taking virtual engagement. The start-up has three objectives: enable the audience to take part in the conversation; allow audience members to communicate with one another; and make sure engagement continues once the presentations end.

In-event session functionality includes a Q&A mechanism that parachutes live video of the person asking the question onto the screen alongside the panelists and a range of emojis through which audience members can react to content and presenters receive the feedback immediately.

Airmeet also provides social lounges: the host sets up virtual tables that are visible on the event app; participants can see who is sitting at each one and join the conversation, much like a group video call. “At physical conferences, people sit around tables and talk during and after presentations,” says Nishchal Dua, co-founder of Airmeet. “They aren’t doing it in isolation.”

The virtual equivalent of running into someone interesting in a hallway is speed networking. During a 15-minute session in which everyone is online simultaneously, a participant is matched with peers based on personal profiles and can choose to talk with or skip over each one in turn. An exchange lasts no longer than two minutes, with an option to schedule fuller follow-ups. Dua claims that start-up founders enjoy this process of cycling through dozens of potential contacts.

It is unclear whether LPs feel the same, whether it’s an AGM or a more general setting. “You just get bombarded by random people on networking apps,” says one investor. “As a GP organizing an AGM, your responsibility is to provide an update on the portfolio and communicate with LPs directly. They could find ways to encourage more intimate discussion, but I haven’t seen it done yet.”

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• Topics
• Fundraising
• GPs
• LPs
• Asia
• Investor relations
• covid-19
• coronavirus