This is the season for various Annual General Meetings of companies listed on the Stock Exchange.

The shareholder culture is still rather young in our country and many shareholders, especially the small shareholders, have learnt through their own experience what it means to own shares and to take part in the company’s activities, especially the AGMs.

This is a rather long learning curve, limited in part, by the fact that many PLCs have some big shareholders and then a myriad of small shareholders.

This means that in many cases, the small shareholders who dutifully go to the AGM can indeed ask questions but then their weight and power when it comes to voting are limited.

Even so, however, one must point out that many questions that are made tend to be rather reductive in extent. Many times, the shareholders in question would hold shares as part of their own past work experience in the corporation and so many times the questions raised at the AGM would reflect these concerns and issues.

But AGMs are not there to raise such personal issues. One would want to see points made and analyses explained on far wider issues, especially on the long-term strategic interests of the entity. Many times, this is completely absent from many AGMs.

Many times AGMs tend to be a rather boring experience with the shareholders raising their hands in unison to vote on resolutions, enlivened perhaps by the small reception held at the end of the proceedings.

But experience across many AGMs also shows the emergence of some particular personalities who time and again are the ones who speak and raise questions. This would be on the whole very welcome were it not that the power to speak at AGM after AGM seems to have gone to the head of some who then proceed to come up with the most outlandish claims.

The recent MIA AGM was a case in point. Many times shareholders demand a certain privileged treatment from the company, but to ask, in reparation for a pretended fault when the 6,000 shareholders were not invited to MIA’s 20th anniversary celebrations, for all shareholders to be invited in for a drink, or for all shareholders to be offered a 30 minute half hour flight by the low cost carriers is nothing but ludicrous.

Some questions themselves are quite revelatory, as when a prattling shareholder exhibited an anti diluvian mentality by asking for fax and photocopying machines in the terminal (in this day of email and internet), and then revealed the last time he was in the Departure Lounge was a year ago. This same person would have also made MIA remove all adverts for alcohol etc and/or create an alternative course so that people are not faced by such adverts.

The rest of the small shareholders many times exhibit exasperation with such claims and a general groan goes up when these persons rise to speak again and again.

But what the shareholders must understand is that such personages and such outlandish claims bring the small shareholders as a whole into disrepute.