M&S’s Archie Norman: I’m on mission for investors

Marks & Spencer chairman Archie Norman is spearheading the most high-profile campaign for popular capitalism since the ‘Tell Sid’ privatizations of the 1980s.

Norman, one of the most respected bosses in British business, has written to the Secretary of State for Business, Kemi Badenoch, asking for changes to company law to boost shareholder democracy.

His ‘Share Your Voice’ campaign is supported by the Quoted Companies Alliance, which represents 1,000 listed medium and small companies.

Other lenders include the UK Shareholders’ Association, a lobby group for small investors, and ShareSoc, which represents the interests of individual investors.

The most radical reform proposed is for digital annual general meetings to be recognized as valid for shareholders.

Under current rules, companies must declare a physical location for their AGM and have two or more shareholders physically present. As a result, a meeting consisting of “a few men in a barn in the Outer Hebrides is valid,” while a meeting with “more than 200 investors convened via secure online technology is not,” Norman says in his letter.

The campaign also aims to improve ties between companies and small shareholders using nominee accounts, where their assets are pooled with those of other savers. This is a popular and inexpensive way to hold shares, but companies do not know the identity of the nominated investors and cannot communicate directly with them.

James Ashton, chief executive of the Quoted Companies’ Alliance, said: ‘It is astonishing that, despite the UK’s laser focus on good governance, listed companies still don’t know who many of their shareholders are and can only discover them at great cost . With the London market losing one listed company a week, it is imperative to modernize investor relations to reduce operating costs and better engage private investors.”

Businesses can hold ‘hybrid’ physical and virtual meetings, but a purely digital event is currently invalid under corporate law. “It’s madness,” says Norman, that meetings “don’t keep pace with the digital way the world works now.” Any move away from the traditional AGM, where shareholders can confront the board in person, will be opposed by some. They are also often a stage for protests.

And for some shareholders, the meeting is a social get-together with free food and drinks.

Norman argues that these factors are outweighed by the benefits of a digital meeting, which would be accessible to many more shareholders, including those who live far away. M&S has been holding hybrid meetings since the pandemic. In 2019, the old-style meeting was attended by 561 people, compared to 1,700 shareholders who logged into the digital meeting last year.

Across the market, the number of shareholder meetings was down 55 percent by 2022, and recent research has shown that 53 percent of shareholders are unable to attend due to travel.

Norman wants shareholder communication – still mainly via print and post – to move into the digital age. He said, “Bank statements, credit agreements, gas and utility bills, receipts and even football tickets have all now shifted to a digital-first process.”

He wants digital as the standard procedure and requires investors to provide an email address before purchasing shares. Each paper mailing to shareholders at Marks & Spencer costs £100,000.

Millions of people are still believed to have paper share certificates, including for assets they inherited or purchased during the privatizations of the 1980s, when an advertising campaign used the slogan ‘Tell Sid’ urging the public to buy shares in British Gas. But their numbers are declining.

A review by attorney Mark Austin suggested digitizing stock certificates, and city grandmaster Sir Douglas Flint is leading a digitization task force.

Last night Marks & Spencer denied speculation that it plans to cut hundreds of jobs at its headquarters. A spokesman said the figure is “just inaccurate.”