The Relationship Among Performance, Discretionary Accruals and Annual General Meetings

The annual shareholder meeting (AGM) provides an important forum where shareholders can evaluate the firm's financial performance, and also exercise their rights as shareholders. The timing of the AGM is an important factor that determines their attendance. To investigate our thesis that firms with poorer performance have incentives to deter shareholders from attending AGMs, we examine whether the timing of the AGM is associated with the firm's financial performance and earnings quality. We also assess whether the type of family control and the deviation between control rights and cash flow rights affect AGM timing. Our results show that companies with good performance conduct AGMs earlier. Furthermore, firms that are family-owned or have family business managers with good performance hold AGMs earlier, regardless of whether these firms have a higher or lower degree of deviation between control rights and cash flow rights. Finally, we find that firms with good performance tend to hold their meetings on days when there is a low concentration of other AGMs. However, this effect is moderated by earnings quality-firms with good performance but lower earnings quality hold their AGMs on days when there is a high concentration of other AGMs.