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Originally Posted by dr00
If the shares are held in your personal name, yes, you just rock up, register as you enter (likely the registrations will be handled by someone from their share registry IE Computershare).
If the shares are held in joint names, your super account, or a company name, you will need to complete the proxy which would have been attached to your notice of meeting that you got in the mail, have all the signatories sign (IE the trustees of the super fund if joint, the other joint owner of the shares, or other director of the company if applicable) and elect you as their proxy. Send this form back to the company/share registry at least 48 hours prior to the meeting (so do it now), and then you rock up in person as the proxy and vote on behalf of the entity. A proxy appointed to attend and vote for a member has the same rights as the member to speak at the meeting and vote. Sometimes they will give you a coloured paddle that you can hold up in the air instead of hold up your hand, this is most common in very large meetings where they may be lots of visitors and a show of hands would be impossible to tell who actually has a voing right.
Then you just grab a seat. You will get the opportunity to ask questions if you want which you will be invited by the Chair at the appropriate time.
As mentioned you will get the opportunity to vote with a show of hands on each of the resolutions detailed in the notice of meeting. Only exception to this will be if they have standing orders (a procedure in which all general meetings for this company are to be run) which specify that all resolutions will be done by a poll rather than a show of hands (this could be in their constitution as a replacable rule also). This is most common with the larger companies just to save the hassle where lots of smaller shareholders flood the room and vote against all the resolutions which will force the Chair to sending the resolutions to a poll anyway. Saves time and hassel.
Re asking questions of management, you will be invited to ask questions that pertain to the resolutions that were notified in the notice of meeting. It is actually a requirement of the corps act that a shareholder has the right to ask questions and be given reasonable opportunity to be heard. If you just want to have a chat to one of the management and not ask a formal question in the meeting then the best chance is usually after the formal business when the chair has closed the meeting, hopefully at that time he will say something like “that’s the end of formal business ladies n gents I will now officially close the meeting, and I invite you to stay for a coffee and informal discussion”. This is your best chance for an informal chat with the directors/management.
All of the above is on the basis that you are a shareholder of course which you didnt mention. If you are not a shareholder, just rock up and register as a visitor. In most constitutions the Chair has every right to refuse visitor entry to the AGM. The only people that he must let into the meeting are shareholders, their elected proxies, directors, and the auditors. Anyone else he can kick out but I have never seen this happen before (apart from a Wesfarmers meeting yonks ago when a billion greenies rocked up and wanted to save the trees).
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{bastard} lol ] 
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