I went to Public Bank Bhd's 51th Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the Shangri-La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur on 27 March.
I reached the Shangri-La Hotel at about 11:30am and quickly headed to the meeting room for registration. Upon registration, I was given a souvenir item and a passcode slip.
The souvenir item comprised 2 bags.
The passcode slip is shown in the image below.
It was basically a ticket that allowed its holder to vote on the resolutions of the AGM. It also served as a ticket for the exchange of a $50 Parkson Gift Voucher.
However, before you could claim your gift voucher, you had to cast your votes on the resolutions first. The voting was scheduled to take place only after the AGM was over in the same meeting room that was used for registration.
When I came out of the registration room, there was already a long line of people at the foyer waiting to vote.
I joined the queue slightly after 12 pm and I took my position at the end of the line.
(These days, I don't bother to sit in on any of Public Bank Bhd's AGM any more. I had done that a couple of times in previous years to know what it would be like. There would be the usual praises, long story-telling before getting to the main question (eg. "I woke up at 4am this morning and went to the bus station to take the bus to ...") , AGM-irrelevant complaints and grouses (eg, "The ATM machine at this branch ..."), happy birthday greetings to the Chairman, etc.
One thing good about this AGM is that it always end on time at 12:30pm. They are able to do this is because they first gather all the questions from the floor and then give the answers all at one go at the end. It is unlike the ding-dong sessions practised at the AGM's of other companies at which the meetings can drag on for hours.)
After the meeting was over at about 12:30pm, they opened the doors to the meeting room and let the people in to vote. It was slow moving as each time they allowed only about 30 persons in to vote.
At first, the queue was moving in an orderly manner. Not long later, the people started to lose their patience. Some began to cut queue by lifting the tapes that formed the queue boundaries and got to the other side of the boundary. When others saw this, they did not want to lose out and quickly followed suit. Many more followed with pushing and shoving. Finally, all hell broke lose!
The security guards blew their whistles to try to control the crowd. When the pushing subsided, I found myself ended close to the front of the queue. Soon after, I was in the group that was allowed to go into the meeting room to vote.
I went to a table and a young girl was waiting with a tablet. I voted 'Against' for all 4 resolutions. I told the girl that the bank did not deserve a positive response to their resolutions with this poor organisation of the AGM.
On completion of the voting, I was given the $50 Parkson Gift Voucher.
When I came out of the meeting room, there was still a huge crowd outside waiting to vote. I went upstairs to have some coffee before leaving.
