Corporate Profitability and Shareholder Meeting Participation in Italian Listed Companies

This paper intends to investigate the relationship between the attendance of annual general meetings (AGMs) and company performance in terms of profitability. In particular, it is intended to highlight some elements that can be interpreted as constituting attendance at the shareholder meetings, for example, the number of shareholders present at the shareholder meeting, the share of authorized capital attending the shareholder meeting, and the duration of the shareholder meeting. Following this analysis, attention is devoted to the relationship between corporate performance and shareholder meeting participation (one of the possible governance mechanisms available to monitor the activity carried out by company management). We analyse the AGMs convened for the adoption of 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 financial statements for the 2016 and 2017 fiscal periods, respectively. The main results show a positive relationship between the share of authorized capital attending annual shareholder meetings and the level of corporate profitability of Italian listed companies.