eVOTE announces a record number of participants in a General Meeting of Shareholders

eVOTE, an online participation and voting platform in the General Shareholders’ Meeting, launched in 2020 on the Romanian market, has significantly increased the interest and involvement of shareholders in the companies where they have investments. As proof, the application, used today by 35 companies listed on the BVB, including Hidroelectrica and OMV Petrom, contributed to a historical record of shareholder participation in a General Shareholders’ Meeting in Romania: 1,300 votes in the General Shareholders’ Meeting held on Friday, September 27, in physical and online format, by Fondul Proprietatea, listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

During the meeting, the following were put to the vote: the election of two new members for a period of three years in the Committee of Representatives of Fondul Proprietatea, the request of the Ministry of Finance to prohibit the Fund from buying back shares and the revised budget.

eVOTE is an application developed by three Romanian entrepreneurs, specialists in the capital market and IT – Mihai Chișu, Bogdan Iliescu and Ionuț Albu (CEO and founder of the software company Art Games). The solution is free for shareholders, and for companies it means a complete meeting kit: live broadcast, interaction, giving the shareholders the chance to discuss in real time with the company’s representatives, simultaneous translation, including meeting structure templates and speeches for the president.

Through eVOTE, the General Shareholders’ Meeting can be organized in 100% digital format, but also in a hybrid format. This hybrid format, also used by Fondul Proprietatea, allows the simultaneous participation of shareholders who vote physically and of those who choose digital voting, through eVOTE application.

“We can talk today about the era before eVOTE and the post-eVOTE era, that is how much things have evolved. Until 2020, all General Meetings of Shareholders were held physically, in hotels or at company headquarters. A real logistical deployment for the companies (rental costs, operators, risk of errors and lack of quorum), plus time spent in traffic for shareholders, which was reflected in low interest and massive absence.

Companies that have chosen to digitize their General Meetings through eVOTE have understood that they can better use time and resources allocated to organizing meetings to connect and communicate better with their shareholders, to develop topics of interest, to answer questions, instead of manage papers, boxes and tables that do not bring added value. At the same time, it is becoming clear that shareholders want to participate more and more in the general meetings of the companies in which they invest. And the record now registere at Fondul Proprietatea, an investors’ relationship model, has always been. We are happy to be their partner”, says Mihai Chișu, co-founder and CEO of eVOTE.

Many of the absentees of the General Shareholders’ Meetings thus turned into involved voters, for whom the meetings became the most interesting and awaited events. The participants find out “first-hand” important news about the company in which they invest and have direct contact with the management.