NEW YORK - The spring ritual of bank shareholder meetings is under way, and two big banks - San Francisco-based Wells Fargo and New York-based Goldman Sachs - are heading to Salt Lake City.
The banks say they like to rotate their meetings among the big cities where they have major operations. However, the banks’ critics say they’re just trying to avoid the wrath of protesters. Wells Fargo had held its meeting in San Francisco for at least the past 14 years. Goldman Sachs held its meeting in lower Manhattan for 11 straight years and then moved across the Hudson River to Jersey City for 2011 and 2012.
Wells Fargo points out that it’s been doing business in Salt Lake City since the 1850s. It says it has nearly 4,000 employees in Utah, or 1.5 percent of its total.
Goldman Sachs points out that Salt Lake City is home to its second-largest office in the U.S., behind only the New York/New Jersey area. It has about 1,500 employees there, 5 percent of its worldwide total, in jobs including investment banking, wealth management and investment research.
Goldman Sachs says the location is low cost compared with places like New York or Los Angeles.
It’s also helpful, the bank says, to have U.S. employees in another time zone to interact with colleagues around the world, and as a backup during emergencies or natural disasters.
And it notes that for West Coast shareholders, trekking to Utah is more convenient than going all the way to New York.
Other companies get the appeal, too. Disney, based outside Los Angeles; General Electric, based in Connecticut; and AT&T, based in Dallas, have all held shareholder meetings in Salt Lake City within the past two years.
Since the financial crisis in 2008, shareholder meetings have often drawn protesters with placards bemoaning the banks’ government bailout loans, foreclosures and high pay.
A group called 99% Power planned to caravan to Salt Lake City to protest at Wells Fargo’s meeting on Tuesday, but was none too pleased about the change in venue.
“You can run, but you can’t hide,” it said in a statement. Organizers said they weren’t sure if they’d be able to persuade out-of-town protesters to return to Salt Lake City for Goldman Sach’s meeting May 23.
JPMorgan Chase has also started spreading around its annual meetings. In 2011, it moved the meeting from New York to Columbus, Ohio. This year, it will be in Tampa, Fla., for the second year in a row.
Morgan Stanley had already moved its shareholder meeting out of Manhattan by the time the financial crisis happened. This is the eighth year in a row that it will hold its meeting upstate in Westchester County.
Business, Pages 72 on 04/28/2013