By Dev Stahlkopf, Corporate Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary; and Michael Spencer, General Manager, Investor Relations
Ahead of Microsoft’s annual shareholders meeting later this year, we wanted to share an update with our shareholders about an exciting new way to participate in the meeting, regardless of where you live.
At the conclusion of each annual shareholders meeting, we meet with our teams and get input from shareholders on what went well and what we could do to improve in the future. A consistent piece of feedback has been to do more to reduce barriers to communication, improve efficiency and better serve our shareholders across the globe. To that end, we are adopting a virtual meeting format for our annual shareholders meeting on Dec. 4. The virtual meeting format will offer the same opportunities to participate as provided at the in-person portion of our past meetings.
A virtual meeting format also provides a consistent experience to all shareholders regardless of location, as well as the opportunity for global, multilingual and interactive access to a dialogue with our senior executives and directors. This shift also addresses the ongoing decline in the number of shareholders attending our in-person meeting and changes in Washington state law offering companies more flexibility to effectively use technology to conduct shareholders meetings.
As with previous shareholders meetings, a business update from senior executives will be followed by a 30-minute question and answer session with shareholders. Microsoft’s board of directors will attend the meeting to directly hear shareholders’ questions and feedback.
In addition to the live webcast of the annual shareholders meeting, shareholders will have the option to view the meeting through Microsoft Teams at www.microsoft.com/investor. The Teams broadcast will use Azure AI for real-time translation in several languages. As with previous meetings, the transcript with video and audio of the entire meeting will be available on the Microsoft Investor Relations website following the meeting.
Along with questions submitted live during this year’s question and answer session with shareholders, investors may also submit a question in advance of the meeting at www.proxyvote.com after logging in with their Control Number. Additional details will be available on the Microsoft Investor Relations website before the meeting.
Our commitment to forward-looking corporate governance continues to include proactive outreach to seek insights from our shareholders and innovations in how we communicate with shareholders, such as our ongoing series of video interviews with members of our board of directors.
We appreciate the diverse perspectives and feedback we receive from our shareholders. We look forward to ongoing shareholder engagement that occurs not just through our annual shareholders meeting but throughout the year ahead.