The Clustering of Shareholders’ Meeting Dates in Taiwanese Stock Markets

A study of the dates of shareholder meetings held in 2008 and 2009 reveals significant clustering. Especially on 13 June 2008, when 585 firms simultaneously held annual shareholders' meetings, accounting for 45.35% of the total market. Consequently, the Financial Supervisory Committee began to impose a daily limit on the number of firms that could hold shareholders' meetings, initially set at 200. This paper compiles information from the Chinese Farmers' Calendar and confirms that firms avoid “inauspicious dates” for holding shareholders' meetings. Furthermore, firms not driven by superstition may also use the Chinese Farmers' Calendar to select meeting dates, with the aim of deterring some minor stakeholders from attending. We will show that firms who select similar dates for holding shareholders' meetings tend to follow similar policies. The tendency of preserving similar policies has decreased since the enactment of the new regulation. Despite these changes, both before and after the enactment of the new regulation, firms are still most likely to hold shareholders' meeting on a Friday and least likely to do so on a Monday. Nonetheless, there was a slight decrease in the weekend-effect after the new regulation was implemented. Moreover, there was a tendency to hold directors' meetings and the shareholders' meetings on the same weekdays, especially when both meeting dates were held on Fridays, with a gap of 12 weeks in between. This tendency has also decreased since the regulation came into force. The evidence suggests that behavioral factors come in to play when shareholders' meetings are being scheduled