What are the minimum meeting requirements for a corporation?

Annual meetings play an important role in corporations. Since corporations can have many different shareholders, annual meetings allow an efficient, effective way to schedule a day where they can all come together and have an opportunity to participate in the corporation's activities. One important opportunity is the ability to elect at least 1 new director to replace an existing director.

In order to make sure all the shareholders have an opportunity to clear their schedule and plan to attend the meeting, proper notice must be given that lets the shareholders know the time and place of the meeting. In other words, a corporation can't send its shareholders a postcard that says only "See you at this year's meeting!" Shareholders need to know (a) where exactly do you want me to show up, and (b) when exactly do you want me to show up?

Finally, the last important thing to know about shareholder meetings is even though every shareholder has a right to attend the shareholder meeting, not every shareholder is required to attend. What's important is a "quorum."

A quorum is a fancy Latin word that basically means "enough people have showed up to a meeting to make it fair to say we actually held a meeting." Note that when it comes to shareholders, the importance isn't necessarily how many people show up to a meeting, but how many shares show up to vote. Hop over to the hypos for an example.