AGMs: Where are the shareholders despite a surge in investor base?

While the number of shareholders continues to rise, investor participation in annual general meetings has been steadily declining

Writing about the East India Company in the 1700s, Nick Robins in his book The Corporation That Changed the World wrote that “the (East India) Company operated as a limited property-based democracy that was run for and by its shareholders……(The) Company’s shareholders had to have £500 of nominal stock before they could vote either in the quarterly meetings of the Court of Proprietors held in March, June, September, and December, or at the annual meeting in April. This was the high point in the Company’s calendar, when over a thousand shareholders would gather to elect a slate of 24 directors.”