Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting is easily
the largest with more than 40,000 shareholders
attending.
At the conglomerate’s meeting last weekend,
the crowd filled an arena and several overflow
rooms to hear revered investors Warren Buffett
and Charlie Munger answering
questions.
Attendees want to learn from
the two successful investors.
But they also come to Omaha,
Nebraska, to attend investment
conferences and see friends at
other events, said Whitney
Tilson, who just attended his
22nd consecutive meeting.
Walmart hosts the
second-largest meeting but it
began with six shareholders in a
coffee shop near the company’s warehouse after
it went public in 1970. It grew into a picnic hosted
by founder Sam Walton, Walmart spokeswoman
Tara Aston said.
One of the only other annual meetings that
comes close is the Green Bay Packers. The team
holds a shareholders meeting
because they are the NFL’s
only publicly-owned team.
Roughly 7,000 fans show up for
the event.
Ted Allen with the National
Investor Relations Institute says
most shareholder meetings in
the United States don’t attract
much of an audience, aside
from a few individual investors,
employees, and retirees who
hold company stock.