Uptevia prepares and holds its clients’ ordinary, extraordinary, combined or special general meetings of shareholders. It is involved before, during and after the general meeting. The organisation of a successful general meeting is the result of close collaboration between the issuer and Uptevia.
1. Prior to the meeting
Together with its client, Uptevia defines the timetable from the date set for the general meeting.
Our teams set up an online pre-general meeting voting platform (Votaccess) for the issuer’s shareholders, regardless of the form in which their shares are held. This module is available on OLIS Actionnaire or Planetshares (for registered shareholders) or on the financial intermediaries’ portal (for bearer shareholders). It enables shareholders to consult the documentation relating to the General Meeting, to vote for the proposed resolutions, to give a proxy or power of attorney to the Chairman and to request an admission card.
Uptevia publishes the texts of the notice of meeting in a legal gazette and/or the BALO and sends the notices to shareholders by post or electronically.
We create and send out single postal voting forms and admission cards to shareholders who have requested them. Documents relating to the enrolment phase are also designed in advance of D-day. All pre-meeting votes are counted and regularly transmitted to the customer right up to the day before the meeting.
A few months before the meeting, Uptevia goes to the meeting venue to carry out a technical visit in order to secure the material needs of the Uptevia delegation on D-day.
Christel BOISSEL, Deputy Head of Client Support: “The organisation of the BNP Paribas meeting went smoothly with our client’s various contacts (mainly with Investor Relations, Communications and the legal department) thanks to the relationship of trust that has been built up over several years between the BNP Paribas and Uptevia teams.”
2. D-Day
Uptevia supervises the reception, the registration of shareholders on a tablet and the supply of a voting box needed to vote on the resolutions. The Uptevia teams establish the quorum by taking into account the shareholders present, represented and postal votes. Finally, we transmit the certified results of the vote on the resolutions.
For its 2024 Annual General Meeting, BNP Paribas opted to use a tablet to sign in and to vote on resolutions using a voting terminal. The voting cards were handed out at various counters, depending on the shareholder’s profile and the documents in their possession on the day of the meeting:
- Shareholders with an admission card,
- Shareholders with a certificate of attendance,
- Registered shareholders
At the same time as the voting session is taking place, the Uptevia and service provider teams are busy in the cockpit counting the votes cast for the resolutions in real time, adding them to the postal votes and broadcasting the final result for each resolution in the room where the meeting is being held.
Some key figures for the BNP Paribas General Meeting on 14 May 2024: more than 950 shareholders attended, welcomed by nearly 10 Uptevia employees and our service provider MMA, 19,500 instructions were received, 1,200 of which resulted in admission cards being issued.
3. The days following the meeting
Immediately after the meeting and no later than 5 working days later, Uptevia provides its client with the results. A paper return to the issuer including the attendance sheet certified by the officers of the general meeting, postal votes, proxies and powers of attorney to the Chairman and details of the general meeting results is then sent.
Close collaboration with the customer is essential if the general meeting is to be a success. As you will have gathered, organising a general meeting is a very intensive process for Uptevia. If you multiply this process by 900, you will see the extent of Uptevia’s General Meeting activity.
“The professionalism of Uptevia’s teams is, for BNP Paribas, one of the necessary guarantees for the proper holding of its General Meeting and for the legal validity of this meeting” Patrice MENARD, Head of Investor Relations and Individual Shareholders, BNP Paribas.
