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News Release from: Standard Life Bank | Subject: AGM
Edited by the Insidemoneytalk Editorial
Team on 07 April 2008
Standard Life - AGM Mailing
Tomorrow (Friday, April 4th) sees the start of one of the largest logistical operations carried out each year by any FTSE 100 company.
Standard Life will press the 'send' button on half a million emails and put more than 1 million letters and packages in the post to provide all of its shareholders with details of the AGM, which will be held in Edinburgh on May 19, and also access to their 2007 Annual Report and Accounts Highlights: Standard Life has around 1.5 million shareholders in over 50 different countries
This article was originally published on Insidemoneytalk on 19 Apr 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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In the next few days, every shareholder will be contacted by the Chairman, Gerry Grimstone, urging them to have their say at the AGM and to make use of the fast, easy and secure online voting system.
There will be twelve resolutions voted on at the AGM including the approval of the final dividend of 7.7p and the adoption of new articles of association to take account of company law changes in the Companies Act 2006.
Chairman's quote: Gerry Grimstone said: "Having around 1.5 million shareholders in over 50 countries across the globe presents Standard Life with an interesting challenge when it comes to communicating with them all individually.
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We want to keep our shareholders properly informed about the business and we want to make it as easy as possible for them to have their say on how the business is run.
I hope that, wherever they are in the world, they will use their vote at this year's AGM." Facts: Standard Life has approximately 1.5 million shareholders living in over 50 different countries.
Around 65% of our shares are owned by individuals making it one of the largest retail shareholder bases of any company in the UK and making the AGM mailing a massive logistical exercise.
In this years AGM mailing, which starts on April 4th, shareholders will all receive access to a letter from the Chairman, a guide to the forthcoming AGM, voting forms, the 2007 Annual Report and Accounts and 'Shareholder News'.
When it comes to the AGM mailing, shareholders fall into three different categories - the 500,000 who have opted to receive all communication by email, the around 900,000 who receive a letter providing details of how to access all the material online and the 100,000 - only 6 % - who prefer to receive hard copies of all the communications through the post.
If the 6% of our shareholders receiving all their communications in paper format decided, instead, to view the 'Annual Report and Accounts' and 'AGM Guide' online it would save a further 93 tonnes of paper and about £120,000.
This years AGM will see full scale online voting used following a successful trial last year.
This gives shareholders another, convenient, method for them to use their vote.
Shareholders must vote online before 11am (UK time) on 17 May.
Shareholders are still able to vote in person at the AGM or by paper voting form.
The AGM must approve the final dividend of 7.7p which is worth £167m, or £66.60 to the average shareholder holding 865 shares.
After extensive research Standard Life found that the majority of our shareholders don't want a lot of detailed financial information.
So this year we are not producing an annual review.
If any shareholders want to they can still access the full Annual Report and Accounts.
We've created 'Shareholder News' which addresses the issues that shareholders told us they wanted to know more about (eg what affects the share price and an explanation of the 'credit crunch') as well as the latest company highlights and what we are doing to drive shareholder value.
There are 46 different versions of the packs being sent to shareholders - depending on their location, language spoken and preference for how they would like to receive communications from Standard life.
This has been reduced from the 200 different versions used last year.
The distribution list for e mail recipients of the AGM mailing, if printed off, would stretch for approximately 1600 metres - long enough to stretch from Standard Life House to Edinburgh Castle and back again.
There are no current plans to print off the list.
The material being distributed to shareholders is provided in three different languages to reflect the areas where Standard Life has a significant number of shareholders.
The languages are English, French Canadian and German.
Standard Life has more individual shareholders in Germany alone than many FTSE 100 companies have in total.
Of Standard Life's 1.5 million shareholders, 1.4 million live in the UK, 147,000 in Germany, 78,000 in Ireland, 27,000 in Austria and 13,000 in Canada.
You may also be interested to know that Standard Life has a solitary shareholder in each of the following dozen countries - Bahrain, the Bahamas, Botswana, the Falklands, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Monaco, Nigeria, Russia, St Helena and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
In the UK the top ten postcode areas where Standard Life shareholders live are Edinburgh (39,533), Belfast (34,374), Glasgow (27,955), Birmingham (27,232), Nottingham (22,342), Sheffield (21,498), Leicester (21,272), Guilford (20,456), Peterborough (20,041) and Reading (19,943).
Other large UK cities with more than 10,000 Standard Life shareholders include Newcastle (19,247), Bristol (18,864), Cardiff (15,435), Leeds (14,217), Manchester (14,070), Oxford (13,219), York (12,239) and Liverpool (10,595).
The other main Scottish postcode areas where our shareholders live are Aberdeen (17,409), Kirkcaldy (11,451), Kilmarnock (11,316), Paisley (9,623), Falkirk (8,051), Motherwell (7,911), Inverness (7,112), Dundee (7,035), Perth (6,122), Dumfries (5,475), Galashiels (3,729), Kirkwall (1,650) and Lerwick (983).
The two postcode areas in the UK with the fewest Standard Life shareholders could hardly be more different.
The Outer Hebrides with 596 and West Central London with 449.
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