Tea, biscuits and argy-bargy

I converted to the religion of annual meeting attendance late. Earlier in my investing career, eyeballing management wasn't a big priority (it's still a secondary consideration but that's a topic for another time).

Now I like seeing management in action. You can tell a lot about the managing director and the board from how they treat shareholders at the annual meeting. Witness new chairman Bob Every at Wesfarmers, a company where the board seems to be changing for the worse.

Sure, the meetings can be irritating. Professional windbags like Jack Tilburn often hijack proceedings and develop a following (you'll generally be spared his gasbagging at smaller company meetings). And many shareholders prefer complaining about the lack of parking at the venue or poor quality muffins than more substantive issues.

So shareholders that ask management probing questions are to be applauded. This year's Treasury Group meeting was particularly interesting for all the reasons I mentioned in Treasury Group faces the critics but also for the shareholder input from the floor.

Annual meetings, whilst they can be entertaining, aren't for entertainment. They're a platform to ask serious, probing questions of management. Sometimes they take a long time. If they become a circus, or are cut short before all shareholders can be heard, they cease to be useful, although this in itself is revealing. If management suffers the fools gladly and then answers great questions intelligently it says a lot.

This year I had that feeling at Treasury Group, Harvey Norman and Sonic Healthcare. I certainly didn't have it at Wesfarmers.

I also learned snippets of information that I wouldn't have otherwise. At Sonic, management displayed a map of their operations in the US that didn't make it into the materials later released to the ASX. At Harvey Norman I heard shareholder praise for its remuneration report (something I rarely spend much time on if I'm happy with the company's performance). Annual meetings can therefore help 'fill in the blanks'.

So when annual meeting season rolls around next year, why not head along? While the price of attendance can be a succession of irritating questions and low quality muffins, they do produce the occasional gem.

Did you attend any annual meetings this year? Which ones impressed you, and which ones didn't? Did you learn anything you wouldn't have from just reading the annual reports?