What could be more natural for shareholders than to want real debate at the General Meeting about the environmental risks associated with intensive operations to extract crude oil from oil sands?
After we had filed our resolution (with nearly 0.93% of the share capital), the Board of Directors noted that two shareholders representing more than 0.43% of capital had since withdrawn their resolutions requests, which means, de facto, that we will not be able to introduce our resolution at the General Meeting.
For the first time since our SICAV Proxy Active Investors was formed, shareholders have joined us to file a resolution then withdrawn their participation with no official explanation.
Since the SICAV was formed in 2004, every draft resolution filed has been rejected by the company, and we have had to fight to persuade it to accept external resolutions not introduced by the Board.
At the same time, company employees have real difficulty each year trying to file resolutions that seem important to them, in an attempt to establish dialogue among shareholders at the General Meeting and thus to reinforce the affectio societatis between the company and its shareholder-employees concerning Total’s corporate vision.
In this light, is it any surprise that certain directors were re-elected only with small majorities at the General Meeting, even though the Board of Total approved them as “independent” a few years ago, yet all the institutional investors labelled them as “not free from conflicts of interest”?
Whilst Total is the leading listed European company, as a matter of urgency it must re-establish a bond of trust with its shareholders if they are to adhere to a sustainable corporate vision, in spite of the sector in which the company operates. This bond cannot be formed by systematically refusing every draft resolution that has not been issued by the Executive Management itself.
Perhaps now is the time to demand a separation of functions, so that a non-executive Chairman can assume responsibility for re-establishing a connection with all the shareholders and facilitating debate in the General Meeting between the shareholders and the Executive Management?
PhiTrust Active Investors
Investor and Shareholder
Investor and Shareholder
