When shareholders speak, their voices don’t carry far
The chairman of Phillips 66 had already given his speech, the tally of proxy votes had been announced, and now the meeting was getting interesting because it was finally time for shareholders to ask questions. But the public relations man for Phillips 66, the Houston refining and petrochemicals company, turned down the volume, making it impossible for reporters in the next room to hear what the shareholders had on their minds.
Or what Phillips 66 CEO Greg Garland was telling them.
It turns out that press — actually anyone who isn’t a stockholder — can’t listen to the question-and-answer period of Phillips 66’s annual stockholder meeting. When the company posts the meeting to the web, the questions and answers are trimmed from the presentation.
“It’s common practice,” company spokesman Dennis Nuss said.
Nuss said the speaker system that piped in the meeting to the press was supposed to automatically cut off at the point shareholders made their way to the microphones. But something malfunctioned, and Nuss instead lowered the volume in the press briefing area.
When I protested, Nuss said there was nothing he could do about it.
Every year, typically in the spring, companies hold their annual shareholders meeting, a time when top corporate officers stand in front of their investors to report how the company did the previous year. The report is typically upbeat, refreshments are served, and the scripted meetings follow a tight format, calling for shareholder votes, election announcements and a speech or two.
But the question-andanswer period — the time when shareholders can get up and ask the suits onstage anything they’d like — can make the coolest CEO sweat. It’s when the carefully choreographed production can veer sharply off course if an investor who may also be a vendor, worker or member of an advocacy group, gets a chance to talk about a problem, whether it’s not getting paid for a project, losing a job or damaging the environment. Some CEOs practice extensively, going through a wide range of questions that may come up, learning to deflect anger and trying to keep anyone else in the room from piling on.
Reporters did get a chance to ask Garland their own questions after the annual meeting, a session he noted that he enjoyed because he could decompress after facing shareholders. That should give you an idea of the type of heat CEOs can feel when they open the floor to the owners of their companies.
My question was about safety, and Garland told me that Phillips 66 is creating a culture of safety so anyone can shut down operations if something looks amiss. He said the company celebrates when problems are uncovered and when it’s just a false alarm.
“Safety is every person’s responsibility,” he said.
That’s good to know. But I still want to know what shareholders of Phillips 66 — whose policies and practices, safety and otherwise, can affect Houston greatly — have on their minds.
The question-and-answer period can make the coolest CEO sweat.