For the very first time, Italian retail investors can have access to proxy advisory services
Retail shareholders are the weakest link of the share ownership chain: relatively higher individual costs, lower responsiveness to market volatility, informative asymmetries and difficult access to professional services are some of the characteristics that make private investors more exposed to financial crisis. Actually, the various scandals that involved Italian companies over the last couple of years strongly damaged the retail shareholders, not always able to quickly understand the risks of a poor governance and/or of specific proposals submitted to the Shareholder Meeting. That was the case of Banca MPS, when in 2008 the disastrous acquisition of Antonveneta was approved by the EGM with 99% of favourable, and likely unaware, voting shareholders.
Starting from March 21st, for the first time ever, Italian retail shareholders can benefit of the same level of support as institutional investors: Frontis Governance, the first proxy advisor completely focused on the Italian market, will provide all information and detailed analysis on upcoming shareholder meetings through the app “MyShares” (developed by ProxyCensus Ltd for iPhone and iPad, with a version for Android to follow in the very near future). Users will be alerted of all dividends paid and general meetings called by Italian listed companies, including: ex-dividend date, dividend per share and dividend calculator, agenda items, date, time and location of the meeting and the record date. Frontis Governance’s detailed reports will be available too, at a retail-oriented price, in order to allow even smallest shareholders to duly exercise their voting rights.
MyShares represents a real revolution that will allow all shareholders to benefit of professional services so far dedicated only to fund managers and banks. The first version of the app is dedicated to Italian investors only (all information and documents are in Italian), but the target is to cover all major markets soon.
MyShares is available now on iTunes’ App Store.