Page 164 - Albanian law on entrepreuners and companies - text with with commentary
P. 164

Article 143
                                       Minutes of Meeting
                 (1) Each decision of the  General  Meeting must  be recorded in the  minutes.  The
            Managing Director is responsible for keeping a copy of the minutes.
                 (2) The minutes must contain the following: place and date of the meeting, agenda,
            name of the chairman and the record keeping person,  voting results, statement of the
            chairman regarding the decision making and any dissenting opinions of shareholders.
                 (3)  The  list  of  participants  shall  be  attached  to  the  minutes  as  well  as  the
            documentation concerning the convening of the General Meeting.
                 (4) The minutes and the list of participants must be signed by the chairman and
            the record keeping person.
                 (5)  The  Managing  Director  shall  post  a  copy  of  the  minutes  on  the  company’s
            website within 15 days after the General Meeting.


                                          Article 144
                                           Quorum
                 (1) In case of matters requiring ordinary majorities, the General Meeting may only
            make  valid  decisions  if  attended  by  shareholders  holding  more  than  30%  of  the
            subscribed voting shares. In case of matters requiring qualified majority as of  Article
            145, the General Meeting may only make valid decisions if the shareholders having more
            than half of the total number of votes are participating in the voting in person, by letter,
            or by electronic means in accordance with Article 142.
                 (2) If the General Meeting could not be held due to lack of the quorum referred to
            in paragraph 1, the meeting shall be reconvened with the same proposed agenda within
            30 days.

            Comments:

                 Quorum  requirements  have  always  been  controversial.  One  opinion  holds  that  such
            quorum requirements are not achievable in practice, above all when companies go public. The
            introduction of a quorum should at best be left to the company’s statute. The other opinion
            points  at  the  abuse  of  voting  power  that  has,  above  all,  been  experienced  in  transition
            economies where no or insufficient quorum was established by Law. For example, companies
            took advantage of the absence of a minimum quorum for the reconvened meetings. In case of
            an initial quorum, they announced an initial meeting of the shareholders and, if there were not
            sufficient shareholders present to constitute a legally valid meeting, they would wait a few
            hours and call a second meeting, for which no minimum quorum was set. A publicly traded
            investment fund (in Bulgaria) took advantage of this situation to amend their corporate charter
            and convert the investment fund into a company that was not publicly traded. Similar to the


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