Welcome to the 2020 Annual Meeting for Waste Management. Our host for today's call is Tom Wiedemeyer, Chairman of the Board. At this time, all participants will be in a listen only mode. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Mr. Wiedemeyer.
You may begin.
Good afternoon, and welcome to the 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders of Waste Management, Inc. I am Tom Wiedemeyer, Chairman of the Board. I will also be serving as Chairman of this meeting. Due to public health concerns posed by COVID-nineteen, we are conducting our Annual Stockholder Meeting virtually and we appreciate you joining us on this platform. Available on the virtual meeting platform is a copy of our agenda and the rules of conduct that will govern this meeting.
We will conduct the business portion of the meeting first and we'll answer questions at the end of the meeting. As explained in the rules of conduct, questions must be relevant to the business of the company or this annual meeting and of interest to stockholders in general. Please confine questions to 1 subject at a time. Multiple questions on the same subject may be summarized and answered together. To allow a fair opportunity for stockholders to ask questions, we will limit each stockholder to 2 questions.
We may not be able to answer every question submitted. If a stockholder has a question that is not answered during this meeting, we invite you to contact Waste Management's Senior Director
of Investor
Relations, Mr. Ed Agle, after the meeting at 713 265-1656 or eegl atwm.com. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded on behalf of Waste Management. However, no one attending this meeting is permitted to use any recording device. I would like to thank each of our director nominees for joining us virtually today.
Additionally, I would like to acknowledge Mr. Patrick Gross. Pat has been a dedicated and valuable contributor to our Board since 2006, including serving as Audit Committee Chair since 2010. As disclosed in our proxy statement, Pat did not stand for reelection this year due to the retirement age in our corporate governance guidelines. Pat has worked closely with Bill Plummer in preparation to transition the Audit Committee Chairmanship.
On behalf of the Board and the company, I want to extend our tremendous gratitude to Pat and say you will be missed. Also joining us virtually today are the following senior executives of Waste Management and they will be available to address questions at the end of the meeting. Jim Fish, President and CEO John Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Devina Rankin, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial and Chuck Bekker, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer. Also in attendance and available to answer questions today are Vivian Martinez and Philip Jeffries with Ernst and Young, the company's independent registered public accounting firm. Finally, we welcome Rhonda Carroll, who has been appointed on behalf of Broadridge Financial Services to act as Inspector of Election for today's meeting.
To commence the business portion of our meeting, I will ask Courtney Tippey, our Corporate Secretary, whether today's meeting has been duly called.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Notice and proxy materials for today's stockholder meeting have been provided to our stockholders with a record date of March 16, 2020. Ms. Carroll reports that stockholders owning at least a majority of the outstanding shares entitled to vote are present in person or by proxy.
Therefore, Mr. Chairman, a quorum is present and today's meeting is duly called.
The notice for this meeting haven't been made duly and a quorum present, this meeting is called to order for business. We have 4 items of business for today's meeting. The first item is the election of 8 directors. All of the Director nominees are currently serving as Directors, including myself. The additional nominees are Frank Clark, Jim Fish, Andreas Gluski, Victoria Holt, Kathleen Mazzarella, William Plummer and John Pope.
Please see Pages 17 to 21 of the company's proxy statement available by link on the virtual meeting platform for additional information about the nominee's background, experience and committee positions. The other items of business are to ratify the appointment of Ernst and Young as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2020 to approve on an advisory basis the company's executive compensation and lastly, to vote on a proposal to amend and restate the company's employee stock purchase plan to increase the number of shares authorized for issuance. The polls are open for voting. If the stockholder who has registered to participate in today's meeting using their 16 digit control number and have not submitted his or her proxy or who wishes to withdraw his or her proxy and vote in person, please do so now by clicking on the Vote Here button on your screen. Stockholders who have set in proxies or submitted a proxy via telephone or Internet and do not want to change their vote do not need to take any further action.
While we allow time for voting, I'd like to remind you that some of the statements made in response to stockholder questions today may be considered forward looking statements based on current expectations, projections or opinions about future periods. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please see the risk factors in the company's most recent Form 10 ks and subsequent Form 10 Qs filed with the SEC for a discussion of some of these risks and uncertainties. These documents are also available on the Investors page of the company's website, www. Wm.com.
I hereby declare voting closed. I will now ask our corporate secretary to report the voting results.
I have been advised by the Inspector of Elections that the ballot count confirms that each of the 8 nominated directors has been elected. The stockholders have ratified Ernst and Young LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2020. The company's executive compensation has been approved and the stockholders have approved the amendment and restatement of the employee stock purchase plan to increase the number of shares authorized for issuance. The final voting results will be published in the company's Form 8 ks that will be filed within 4 business days of this meeting.
This concludes the formal business portion of the annual meeting. We will now open the meeting to stockholder questions pursuant to the rules of conduct for the meeting. Any stockholder who has registered to participate in today's meeting using their 16 digit control number may enter a question using the virtual meeting platform. Questions will not be visible to other attendees. Ed Hagel, Senior Director, Investor Relations, will read the questions submitted and direct them to Jim Fish, President and CEO to take the lead on responding.
Ed, over to you.
Thank you. Jim, we have one question. What level of confidence does management have that WM will emerge from this current health crisis stronger than its position before?
Thanks, Ed. Well, certainly during this difficult time, one of our objectives is to emerge from this better than we went in. So we're doing some things like implementing a work from home solution, like implementing a customer digital interaction with our operations to make sure that we do emerge as a better company than we went in. So I have a high level of confidence in that.
This concludes the stockholder question portion of the meeting.
Thank you. We have concluded all the business set forth in the notice of the 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders and Proxy Statement. The meeting is now adjourned. Thank you for attending.
This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day.