MUMBAI, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Indian companies are queueing up to hold their annual general meeting online using virtual tools following the corporate affairs directive to maintain social distancing due to COVID-19 with tech magnate Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) issuing notice to shareholders for the first such meeting on June 11.
Conventionally, such meetings in India were held in large auditoriums in the presence of several hundreds of shareholders, with vibrant discussion on company's annual performance.
"Notice is hereby given that the twenty-fifth Annual General Meeting of Tata Consultancy Services Limited will be held on Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 3:30 p.m. IST through Video Conferencing (VC) / Other Audio-Visual Means (OAVM)," said TCS in its communication to the shareholders.
India's second largest company by market-capitalisation after diversified conglomerate Reliance Industries, TCS, is an information technology service and consulting company with operations in 46 countries across the world.
"In the past, AGMs (annual general meetings) were held in the city where the registered office was located, which was the privilege of the select few resident shareholders of that particular city. However, with the COVID-19 disruption paving way for a larger digital push, shareholders from across the universe will now be able to participate in such meetings and hopefully will facilitate vibrant discussions and transparent replies from the company management," said Makarand Joshi, partner, MMJC and Associates LLP - a Mumbai-based corporate compliance firm.
India has 4,722 listed companies on the two premier bourses of the country - Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange with a large percentage of them having their registered office in Mumbai and Delhi and hence holding their AGMs in the respective city, accordingly.
Mumbai, with 35,273 positive cases of COVID-19 and 1,135 deaths, accounted for close to 22 percent and over 24 percent of the cases and deaths in India, respectively while Delhi with 16,281 cases and 316 deaths account for over 10 percent and over 6 percent, respectively. Both, the financial capital and political capital of Asia's third largest economy continues to remain under nationwide lockdown for the past eight weeks.
As on Friday morning, India, which is now ranked ninth among all countries in the world in terms of confirmed cases, has 89,987 active cases and 4,706 deaths so far. Enditem
