M&S chief is forced top rethink digital-only AGM plan after backlash

Marks & Spencer’s chairman has suggested it could backtrack on discouraging shareholders from attending its annual meeting in person next year after a backlash.

Ahead of its meeting yesterday, the High Street retailer wrote to investors to say: ‘Shareholders are advised not to travel to the venue on the day as the meeting will be fully digitally enabled.’

The move follows a drive launched this spring by chairman Archie Norman to modernise popular capitalism by making meetings digital.

Norman said businesses have been ‘sleepwalking into a situation’ where shareholders are disconnected from their firms and AGMs resemble ‘antiquated events that are not accessible’ for those who live outside London or are strapped for time.

M&S’s meetings were hosted at Wembley Stadium where shareholders queued up for free sandwiches. 

But this year investors at the group’s head office in Paddington were not able to talk to board members or offered refreshments. 

They were instead told to join the meeting ‘electronically’ on phones or laptops.

Norman admitted in a BBC interview yesterday that the company has ‘heard the feedback and we are thinking about it’.

He added: ‘The question now, which the board is going to have to think about given the feedback we have had, is “Why can’t I come along physically and look the chairman eye to eye and buttonhole him?”’

Norman admitted he didn’t think this was ‘unreasonable’.