Full Rites

Annual meetings often get a bad press, with critics writing them off as empty rituals. And it's certainly easy enough to challenge their worth. They are expensive events and the only people who typically turn up are the bored or the retired, who are mostly interested in the free lunch, the giveaways and the opportunity for a day out. For institutional investors and analysts, the physical manifestation of this spring rite has long been an irrelevant exercise and they rarely bother to attend. Some