🪅 Informa AGM Festival? Don’t rule it out!

Part 1 of my 2025 Informa AGM review.

This morning (19 June) at 9am, FTSE 100 events giant Informa hosted its 2025 AGM—hybrid for the first time since COVID—from Nice 🇫🇷 So I had to join online via the Lumi Global platform.

☀️Why Nice? Because the board and team (apparently up to 250 Informa staff) were already there attending (and working at) the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, now part of Informa following its £1.2bn acquisition of Ascential in October 2024. A creative well-intentioned pivot? I think so. A successful outcome? I’m less sure.

Last year’s Informa AGM at their sunlit London HQ was buzzy, packed, and filled with retail shareholders—but also a notable number of employees. That’s no accident.

📈According to high-energy CEO Stephen A. Carter, 1 in 3 Informa employees—33%—are also shareholders, thanks to a generous 2-for-1 global share matching scheme (for every share purchased, the company adds two). Uptake is strong, and it shows.

Shareholding employees tend to stay longer—and Informa’s culture of ownership runs deep. The company also retains 20–25 ex-entrepreneurs who sold their businesses to Informa and continue to hold equity stakes or related instruments.

🤝No surprise then that last year’s AGM crowd felt more like a reunion than a corporate formality. These employees aren’t just showing up—they’re bought in.

☕️Today’s meeting though? Felt more like a small gathering hosted by my upper middle-aged next door neighbours in their living room. Only 5 of the 11 directors appeared on stage, even though 10 attended in person. Why do companies do this? It’s like putting only 4 members of BTS (KPop band more popular than Jesus) on stage and hiding the rest in the audience.

POV: If Pearson can pull off two rows of armchairs for all their directors, so can everyone else!

🎥 We couldn’t see the audience floor (a common flaw in virtual AGMs—Sainsbury's last year was an exception). But according to Mr Carter, there were shareholders present—or at least one (a man named Nigel!) I was the only one asking questions online. So I’ll follow up with the company and registrar to find out what real turnout looked like.

The entire meeting—Chair’s intro, CEO’s 15-min update, and Q&A—wrapped in just 30 minutes, half the length of last year’s AGM. It always feels like a missed opportunity when so much effort goes into an AGM, but so few questions are asked.

I asked two things:

1️⃣ Did employees attend both the AGM and Cannes Lions as a team-building initiative? If not, will they in future? And as a world-leading events business, will Informa consider transforming its AGM into a festival—in the spirit of Berkshire Hathaway’s legendary shareholder weekends?

2️⃣ What’s Informa doing to engage Gen Z? This audience is fluent in social, tech, and alt-finance culture—and will drive the next wave of shareholder power.

🔜 Next post: What UK Plc can learn from Cannes, BTS, and Buffett.