Coke won’t have a physical annual meeting for first time in 99 years

Coca-Cola wrote in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it is using an online-only format “in light of public health concerns regarding the coronavirus pandemic and the importance of safeguarding the health of The Coca-Cola Company’s shareowners, employees, directors and officers.”

It’s the first time Coke has held a solely virtual annual meeting for shareholders, spokesman Scott Leith wrote in an email. The company has held physical shareholder meetings since at least 1921, he wrote, but there is no proof annual meetings were held in 1920 or 1919, when the company went public. In 1919 the world was still in the midst of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

Other U.S. publicly traded companies also are making shifts in shareholder meetings during the coronavirus pandemic. And still others, including Georgia-based UPS and Home Depot, are cautioning that they may later change scheduled meetings in light of the virus.

States typically require publicly traded companies to hold annual meetings and properly notify shareholders in advance. But, prompted by the pandemic, government officials in a number of states, including Georgia, have said that virtual meetings are acceptable.

Annual shareholder meetings often include carefully crafted presentations by chief executive officers and a few votes that — if proposed by the board — typically pass easily. But they also are rare points in official corporate calendars where things can go off script. Shareholders, including those with just a single share, often can ask questions of top brass. Activists sometimes show up to push for changes leaders have resisted.