Shareholders must form unified body - Anane-Antwi

THE Centre for Corporate Governance (CCG), a good corporate governance advocacy initiative in the country, has called on shareholders to consider forming an umbrella body, a shareholders association to enable them voice out their legitimate concerns regarding companies that they hold shares in.
According to the Centre, such a move will enable the individual shareholders to help expose their colleagues to the various rights that individual shareholders hold within the companies in which they hold shares.
Speaking at a public lecture on the theme "the rights of shareholders" in Accra, the Founder of the Centre and a Legal Practitioner as well as a Chartered Accountant, Mr Adu Anane Antwi, said shareholders nation-wide had over the past not exercised in fullest the various rights due them as enshrined in the Company's Act.
The lecture was sponsored by the University College of Management Studies and chaired by Mrs Eldora Koranteny, a legal consultant. It was the fourth in a series organised by the Centre meant to sensitise shareholders and the general public on the rights that shareholders have in companies that they have invested in.
Mr Antwi said, "Shareholders coming together to form a body such as a Shareholders Association would enable institutions such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the CCG to sensitise them on some of their rights."
According to him, the lack of an umbrella body of that kind in country was making it difficult "to communicate so well to shareholders in the country about their legitimate rights in these companies," a situation the founder observed had been left unattended to years.
"Buying shares in a company means part ownership of that company and that gives the shareholder certain legitimate rights within the said company. But how many shareholders are aware of these rights?" Mr Antwi asked.

Mr ADu Anane Antwi

Moves by the Ghana Stock Exchange sometime in 2007 to get shareholders of listed companies on the bourse to form a strong umbrella association as a means of deepening understanding of operations of the market and their rights as well has since not materialised.
Most listed companies throughout the country have over the past few months started holding their annual AGMs. Though almost all shareholders of these companies do endeavour to attend, few of them are ready to ask questions regarding the performance of the respective companies.
But, Mr Antwi said, these shareholders have a range of rights including the right to discuss, determine and approve the terms and conditions of serving Chief Executives, CEOs, MD, Executive Directors and other top managers' terms and conditions "before they start taking them."
"But how many of these top managers' remuneration’s come to shareholders for approval before they are paid to them," Mr Antwi said.
He noted that while other countries were embracing the shareholder rights to the fullest in so doing, helping to strengthen the internal operations of the respective companies, those in Ghana were yet to realise them.
The shareholder, he said, "holds invaluable rights in the company" and further called them throughout the country to take shareholder rights education serious.