German premiere: EQS Group conducts fully virtual Annual General Meeting with live Q&A and voting

Successful premiere: EQS Group has held the first fully virtual Annual General Meeting in Germany where shareholders were able to exercise all of their rights online. Shareholders not only had the opportunity to vote online but could also participate in the general debate with questions and comments. The only thing they had to forgo was cake which had always been served at previous events.

The Munich-based RegTech provider wasn't actually breaking new ground. Eight years ago, EQS Group (initially under the name EquityStory AG) was the first listed company to invite its shareholders to participate in its AGM online and has been doing so ever since. These were however hybrid AGMs with virtual and on-site participation running in parallel as fully virtual AGMs were not permitted under German public company law.

This changed with the recent law to mitigate the consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic, which was passed at the end of March and allowed for fully virtual AGMs. However, some of the new regulations, such as the possibility of excluding the right to ask questions online, were criticised by shareholder protection groups.

Achim Weick, CEO and founder of EQS Group, who has only ever had positive experiences of online shareholder meetings, has a clear position on this: "The modern technologies, which we have been using for years, allow us to reproduce the content of the face-to-face meeting on the Internet and provide participants with a live experience on their own device. As a shareholder-friendly company, we therefore see it as our duty to ensure open and transparent communication without any restriction to shareholder rights."

Other issuers can also continue to benefit from the pioneer's many years of expertise in digital investor relations: "We are a service provider that is passionate about this topic and we will continue to support our clients in holding their shareholder meetings online to further advance the digitalisation of the Annual General Meeting" Weick continues.

In the first three quarters of 2020, EQS Group will, according to current expectations, support a total of around 50 AGMs as a technical service provider.

Contact:

André Marques

CFO

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