Good day everybody and welcome to the Ares Management Corporation Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tony Ressler, Chairman of the Board of Ares Management Corporation. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning,
ladies and gentlemen. Will the meeting please come to order? My name is Tony Ressler, and I am chairman of the board of Ares Management Corporation, and I will be presiding over this meeting. We recognize that these are challenging times, and we appreciate you taking the time to join this webcast today. With me today is Michael Aragetti, our Chief Executive Officer and President.
Before we begin, we would like to first comment on the current events in The United States. In recent weeks, we have witnessed the heartbreaking realities of systemic racism, inequality, police brutality, and injustice faced by black Americans. Our communities deserve better, and we at Ares expect to be part of the solution. Inclusion and diversity has long been a focus at Ares, and as a private sector participant, we are committed to addressing inequities and aiding and bringing about meaningful systemic change. You will be hearing more from us in the coming weeks on some of the actions that we are taking to be an agent of change in our communities.
With that, I would like to start the meeting today by acknowledging the other directors of the company who are present with us today by telephone in listen only mode. Tony Bush, Kip DeVeer, Paul Jubair, David Kaplan, Michael Linton, Judy Olean, and Bennett Rosenthal. Welcome to all. I'd like to begin the meeting by introducing certain representatives of the company who are with us today as well. Carl Drake, our head of public investor relations and communications, Naseem Segati Agili, our general counsel and secretary.
They are joined by other senior representatives from Ares Management. Also present at the meeting are Cliff Kamik, a representative from Ernst and Young, our independent registered public accounting firm. He will be available to answer questions concerning the company's financial statements after we adjourn the official business of the meeting, and John Holoa of American Election Services who has been appointed as inspector of election. Ms. Sigatti Agili will serve as secretary of the meeting and record the proceedings.
I will now turn the meeting over to Mike Arrigetti, who will walk us through the rest of the agenda. Thank you.
Thank you, Tony. The next order of business is a description of the matters to be voted on at today's meeting. The first proposal before the stockholders of the corporation is the election of the nine directors to serve until our twenty twenty one annual meeting as described in our proxy statement. The Board of Directors recommends the election of all the nominees as directors of the corporation. The second proposal is the ratification of the selection of Ernst and Young as our auditor for fiscal year ending 12/31/2020.
The Board recommends voting for the ratification of the selection of Ernst and Young. The polls are now open. Only stockholders of record at the close of business on 04/13/2020 are entitled to vote. At this time, any stockholders that are logged on and who have not already submitted a proxy and wish to vote their shares or change their vote may do so by clicking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. Stockholders who have sent in proxies and do not want to change their vote do not need to take any further action.
While we're giving people the opportunity to vote, I'd like to inform you that we will have time for a question and answer session to respond to relevant stockholder questions after the formal meeting has been adjourned. Only validated stockholders may ask questions in the designated field on the web portal. Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I hereby declare the polls closed. I'll now discuss the results of voting for the record. We have been informed by the inspector of election that a quorum is present for the purposes of transacting business.
Accordingly, I hereby declare that the notice of this meeting has been properly served, a quorum is present as a majority of the voting power of the company is represented by proxy, All items of business are properly presented before this meeting. And of the proposals to be voted on, the inspector of election has informed us that the nominees for election to the Board of Directors have been duly elected for one year terms expiring at the twenty twenty one Annual Meeting of Stockholders, once their respective successors have been duly elected and qualified, or until their earlier resignation or removal, And the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as the company's independent auditors for the twenty twenty fiscal year has been duly ratified. I'm aware of no other business that has been properly brought before this annual meeting. The meeting is adjourned. And now, as I said, we would like to address any stockholder questions and comments.
Please note that we will attempt to answer as many questions as time allows, but only questions that are relevant to the meeting will be addressed. Carl and Veronica, have we received any questions via the web portal?
Thank you, Mike. We have received a question. Before we address it, I would like to remind our listeners that some of the statements made at this meeting may be considered forward looking. The company cautions our investors that results of future operations may differ from those anticipated. We urge you to review the cautionary statements and other information contained in the company's filings, which identify certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in any forward looking statements made during this meeting.
Copies of our filings are available on the website and we undertake no duty to update any of the statements made during this meeting. With that, our first question is if you could provide some color on your dividend outlook and if the company would entertain a share buyback? And then the second part of that question is could you provide some color on how Ares is navigating the working from home and the use of technology during this period?
Thank you, Veronica, and thank you for the question. I think as folks know, the company does not provide formal dividend guidance, but what I would like to do is reiterate our current dividend policy, as well as some recent comments that we have made on our public earnings call regarding the trajectory of the company's earnings. To remind everybody, when the company converted to a C Corp, we instituted and implemented a new capital management policy and dividend framework, whereby we would peg our dividend to our forward FRE. And then retain our performance income or our incentive income onto the balance sheet to reinvest into the growth of our fee related business. We recently said on our earnings call that despite the current market environment that our expectation remains that we would grow our fee related earnings in excess of 15% in 2020.
With regard to working from home, share buyback. The company actually does have a share buyback plan in place both for its common stock and its preferred stock. That typically gets revisited and renewed on an annual basis. We have not been active buying back stock given the current view that we are not at a price level at which that would make sense relative to the strategic and tactical opportunities that are in front of the company right now. And then with regard to working from home, I think Tony and I could not be more pleased with the way that the company is executing since we started working remotely at the very March.
We transitioned all of our offices to remote work very quickly. We had been doing a fair amount of business continuity and disaster recovery planning leading up to the transition to work from home. And I'm happy to report that it has gone seamlessly. We have had no issues. And in fact, given the technology tools available to us, think the company is probably operating as connected and as collaboratively as it ever has in its history.
Some of our smaller offices around the globe in places like Stockholm and Luxembourg are starting to reopen, And we're beginning to get a sense for what that looks like and are planning to reenter the workforce in some of our more dense urban centers is continuing. Any other We
have one additional question. How will this period of low interest rates help areas navigate the field? And are there any opportunities for M and A?
Sure. You know, it's very interesting. Low interest rates have been with us for the last thirty years, and I think telling everybody what they know, rates have been in secular decline for a very long time. That's been one of the big drivers I think of growth in the alternative asset space and has really spurred demand for a lot of the alternative fixed income product that Aerie specifically manages and excels at. So when you think about what low interest rates means for us, I think about it three ways.
One is it should increase the appetite on behalf of institutional and retail investors for the self originated private alternative fixed income product that we source and manage. So I would expect that to be a tailwind for growth. At the same time, as you probably saw yesterday, it positions us both within our funds and at Ares Management Corporation to borrow at low rates and then to reinvest at a much higher rate of return, particularly in dislocated markets like this. So I think in periods of low rates as a borrower, we can set up some very durable liability structure that should be a meaningful catalyst for earnings stability and earnings growth. And then third, it should have an impact to the positive on a number of our more equity heavy strategies around real estate, real assets and private equity as low rates should translate into continued elevated asset prices as well as the ability to service debt to drive asset values.
So I actually think it could be a catalyst for a revaluation upward in the portfolio on the other side of the health and economic crisis. Veronica, was a second part to that question.
I think you've answered most of it. It was the question about the interest rates as well as the M and A opportunities.
Got it. Tony, did you have something you wanted to add?
No, I was just piling on that not just low interest rates but high levels of volatility in the public markets also have driven and I think will continue to drive investors to the alternative asset classes that we manage, particularly in the world of credit and self originated private instruments.
100%. And then on the M and A front, it's a great question. I think that we've been pretty open about our desire to be acquisitive in this environment. If you look at the history of the company, we have been acquisitive in both good market environments and bad. But we have typically given our capital position and capability set, used difficult market environments like this to consolidate share through acquisition.
So if you look at the 02/1929 timeframe and then coming out of that, we were very acquisitive across the platform buying troubled asset managers and management contracts from folks that weren't as well positioned. It's still early this go around. We have yet to seek capitulation from many people that could be good targets, but we would expect that as the duration of the crisis continues that that would become something that would become more relevant for us.
Great. Thank you, Mike. And then the last question we received is how many people are in attendance at the virtual meeting and will we hold a virtual meeting again? And I will let the audience know that we have about 30 people in attendance. And whether or not we will hold a virtual meeting again is probably dependent on the changing environment and where we are next year for our next annual meeting.
Thank you Monica for hosting that Q There and A
are no other questions at this time.
That's great. So seeing as there are no other questions, we appreciate you joining us today and thank you for your continued interest in ARIES.
Thanks for your time everyone.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you very much for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.