In context of a comprehensive written survey all responsible persons of the DAX and MDAX enterprises which already have offered or will offer Internet Proxy Voting to their shareholders for the first time this year have been questioned. For the first time many of the enterprises gave information regarding concrete expectations, experiences and future desires. Since 12 of the 17 enterprises participated in the questioning (this corresponds to a total return ratio of approx. 70 per cent) one can as-sume that the results are representative for Germany.

One of the survey's most important results is that both the technical and the administrative processes have already been developed so far that none of the enterprises reported on considerable problems during the online share voting. This applies both to the exchange of different data sets (online vs. offline) and to the reliability of hard- and software during the Annual General Meeting as well as to the internal and/or external coordination between enterprises and/or external service providers. Due to the innovative character of this new shareholder service only the legal expenditure, which is necessary for the legal security of the enterprises, has been estimated as comparatively high. But even this problem was solved, as the enterprises developed reliable solutions and secured themselves through appropriate user references.

Against the common opinion, the mainspring of enterprises to offer Internet Proxy Voting was not to decrease the personally present shareholders at an Annual General Meeting or the improvement and/or acceleration of the organizational processes during the Annual General Meeting, but the desire to offer a better investor relations service to shareholders and/or to push forward the integration of foreign shareholders and thus to increase the level of the present capital on the Annual General Meeting. Thus - according to the information given by the enterprises - all relevant objectives could be achieved to a large extent. The majority of the responsible persons in the enterprises is convinced that compared to other corporations they set off clearly with the early adoption of this innovative technology and thus strengthened with it the shareholders commitment to the enterprise.

According to the altogether very positive rating, the comparatively small problems during implementation and the estimatation that all relevant goals have been achieved, without exception all those enterprises, which offered Internet Proxy Voting so far, will continue to offer this service to their shareholders also in the future. Beyond that many enterprises are raring to go and observe the current developments of the competitors very exactly.