Extended Review to cover national blue-chip indices in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c39142) has announced the addition of Proxy Voting Season Review 2005 UK & Europe to their offering.

The author reviews the issues proposed to shareholders during 2005 together with a detailed analysis of the results. For the first time the review has been extended to cover national blue-chip indices in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The nine months between 1 January 2005 and 31 September 2005 saw a total of 128 meetings held by FTSE 100 companies - an increase of 22 in the number held during the same period in 2004. Looking at events for the FTSE 100, the FTSE 250, the SmallCap and the Fledgling combined, the number of AGMs fell marginally overall. EGMs, Class Meetings and Court Meetings were more frequent this year. Notably, the number of EGMs increased by around 25%. In Europe, 335 events were recorded across our core coverage.

Meeting Types

In its UK analysis, we are concerned with four basic types of meeting: the Annual General Meeting (AGM); the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM); the Class Meeting; and the Court

Meeting.

In Europe, there are alternatives to cater for: Ordinary Shareholders Meeting: Usually held once a year and takes all decisions not requiring an Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting, i.e. any decision that does not call for changing a company's Articles of Association. The purpose of an Ordinary Shareholders Meeting is to approve the financial statements for the past year and the appointment or replacement of members of a company's corporate management structures.

Extraordinary or Special Shareholders Meeting: May be convened at any time. It is generally the only meeting type that is authorised to make changes to the provisions of a company's Articles: business object, name, authorised share capital (increase, decrease, merger, etc.), administration and management.

Ordinary and Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting: Typical of Italy and France, a 'mixed meeting' of this type enables decisions to be taken whether they fall within the remit of an Ordinary Shareholders Meeting or an Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting. It avoids having to hold two consecutive meetings: both take place on the same day and are convened using the same notice.

Poll Data Response Rate

We obtained poll data from 47.76% of the European meetings we covered within the period. In the UK, the actual response rate was 70.57% overall, compared to 86.43% for the same period in 2004.

Resolution Analysis

The number of resolutions proposed did not increase significantly. The total number of resolutions at UK meetings across all indices remains around 8,650, which equates to just fewer than 11 resolutions per meeting. In European AGMs for our core national coverage, the author recorded 2,441 resolutions equating to just over 11 resolutions per meeting.

Topics Covered:-

1 Introduction

2 Executive Summary

3 Methodology

Part 1 - Meeting Results' Data Analysis

2 Voting breakdown

3 General Dissent

4 UK Dissent per Index

5 European Dissent per Index

Part 2 - Voting & Resolution Focus

3 Key Resolution Focus

4 Voting per Country

5 Observations

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