Broomfield – Dave Friis, a Ball Corp. shareholder for five years, didn’t expect much out of the company’s annual meeting Wednesday, the first he has attended.
“Maybe they’ll give me a cookie,” he quipped. “It’s just nice to see all the men in their thousand-dollar suits.”
He didn’t get a cookie, but there were plenty of well-dressed executives present, including members of the company’s 10-person board of directors.
With just a handful of shareholders in attendance, the meeting zipped through its agenda in 10 minutes.
The Fortune 500 company has de-emphasized the annual meeting in recent years, focusing on investor conferences and one-on- one meetings throughout the year, said David Hoover, Ball’s chief executive and chairman.
“It’s a more effective use of our resources,” Hoover said.
Ball is the 374th-largest company in the United States, with annual revenue of $5.75 billion. The company, which employs about 13,100 worldwide and 3,100 in Colorado, manufactures beverage containers and has a Boulder-based aerospace subsidiary.
When the company was based in Muncie, Ind., where it had its headquarters for 112 years, the annual meetings usually lasted an hour, attracted several hundred shareholders and featured multiscreen slide shows.
But since Ball moved its headquarters to Broomfield in 1998, the annual meetings have generally attracted few shareholders, with the exception of last year when the meeting was held in New York to commemorate the company’s 125th anniversary.
On Wednesday, the company announced the results of the three items shareholders had voted on in advance of the annual meeting:
They approved the re-election of three members of the board – Hoover, Howard M. Dean and Jan Nicholson.
They approved the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company’s independent auditor for 2006.
For the second straight year, they didn’t adopt a shareholder proposal that called for a declassification of the board so that all directors would be elected annually.
Currently, about a third of the board is elected each year. Supporters of the proposal said it would allow shareholders to express their views of the board’s performance annually.
About 55 percent of voting shareholders were in favor of the proposal; 75 percent is required for approval.
Staff writer Andy Vuong can be reached at 303-820-1209 or avuong@denverpost.com.
