Hello, and welcome to the twenty twenty one Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Xerox Holdings Corporation. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. During the business portion of the meeting, we will take questions and comments of each proposal as it is presented. After the meeting has been adjourned, there will be a general question and answer session. You can submit questions or comments at any time during the meeting by clicking on the message icon, which is the icon immediately to the right of the information icon.
It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Keith Cozza, Chairman of the Board of Xerox Holdings Corporation. Mr. Cozza, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Welcome to Xerox's twenty twenty one Annual Meeting of Shareholders, which is being held virtually. I am Keith Cozza, Chairman of the Board of Xerox Holdings Corporation, and I will chair today's meeting. Before we begin the official business of the meeting, let me introduce the other members of our Board of Directors and some key members of management who are with us today. With us today are my fellow directors, Joseph Echeverria, Cheryl Gordon Kroengaard, Tigat Latier and John Visentin, the Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Xerox.
Also with us are our new director nominees, Eris Kakajian, Michelle Maynard Elliott, Stephen Miller, James Nelson and Margarita Paolo Hernandez. Also with us today are the following members of management: Steve Bandrazak, President and Chief Operations Officer Suzanne Morneau Wade, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Xavier Hess, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Louis Pastor, Executive Vice President, Chief Corporate Development Officer and Chief Legal Officer. We are also joined by Doug Marshall, Corporate Secretary of Xerox and from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the company's independent auditor, Ralph Martino. Now let me turn it over to Doug Marshall, who will handle the business of the meeting. Doug?
Good morning. Greg Valliotis of Computershare has been appointed to act as the Inspector of Election. He has subscribed his oath of office and submitted his report as follows. There were 192,566,809 shares of common stock outstanding on 03/26/2021, the record date for this meeting. The holders of approximately 165,036,616 shares are represented at this meeting or approximately 85% of the outstanding shares of common stock.
Accordingly, a quorum is present. During this meeting, comments may be made that contain forward looking statements, which by their nature address matters that are in the future and are uncertain. Actual future financial results may be materially different. Finally, please note that today's meeting is being held entirely virtually and is being recorded. Shareholders who are not able to participate in today's meeting will be able to listen to the recording posted on the Xerox website following the meeting.
Since we have a quorum present, I now declare that the meeting is legally convened. We will now conduct the formal business of the meeting. Only shareholders may submit questions. As we go through the formal business of the meeting, I do ask that shareholder questions and remarks be limited to the subject matter of each specific proposal as it is being presented. Once the meeting is adjourned, directors and members of management will be available to take shareholder questions and comments on other matters.
Shareholders may submit questions and comments during the meeting by visiting the meeting website and following the process and rules described in the rules of conduct for the meeting. Shareholders who wish to vote during the meeting may do so by visiting the meeting website. I will now present the proposals to be voted on. Proposal one, election of directors. I move for the election of each of the nine nominees named in the proxy statement for a one year term as director as provided in the proxy statement for this annual meeting.
Are there any questions or remarks regarding this proposal? Proposal two. We received no comments or questions, so we're proceeding with proposal two. Proposal two, ratification of the appointment of independent registered public accounting firm. I move for the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ended 12/31/2021, as provided in the proxy statement for the annual meeting.
Are there any questions or remarks concerning this proposal? We have received no questions or remarks regarding this proposal, so we will proceed. Proposal three, approval on an advisory basis of the 2020 compensation of our named executive officers. I move for the approval on an advisory basis of the twenty twenty compensation of the company's named executive officers as provided in the proxy statement for this annual meeting. Are there any questions or remarks concerning this proposal?
Please standby due to technical difficulties.
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Thank you very much. We apologize for that. The line got dropped. I will go back and start with proposal three, which is where we left off. Proposal three, approval on an advisory basis of the 2020 compensation of our named executive officers.
I move for the approval on an advisory basis of the twenty twenty compensation of the company's named executive officers as provided in the proxy statement for this annual meeting. Are there any questions or remarks concerning this proposal? We've received no questions or remarks regarding this proposal, so we will proceed. Proposal number four, approval of the company's amended and restated equity compensation plan for non employee directors. I move for the approval of the company's amended and restated equity compensation plan for non employee directors as provided in the proxy statement for this annual meeting.
Are there any questions or remarks concerning this proposal? All right. We've received no questions or remarks, so we will proceed. Proposal five, consideration of a shareholder proposal for shareholder action by written consent and properly presented at the annual meeting. I now ask the shareholder proponent or Mr.
John Chavetin, his qualified representative to present proposal five. The proposal relates to shareholders being able to act by written consent. So we may have enough time for shareholder questions. Mr. Chavetin, I ask that you please keep your remarks very brief.
Operator, will you please open Mr. Chavetin's line?
Hello. This is John Chavetin. Can you hear me okay?
We can. Good morning.
Morning. Proposal five, adopt a mainstream shareholder right, written consent, sponsored by Kenneth Steiner. Shareholders request that our Board of Directors take the necessary steps to permit written consent by the shareholders entitled to cast the minimum number of votes that would be necessary to authorize an action at a meeting at which all shareholders entitled to vote thereon were present and voting. Written consent could only accomplish something if 58% of the shares that normally voted at annual meeting give approval. In resisting this proposal, management is opposed to listening to the voice of 58% of shares.
Management seems to lack the basic awareness that written consent can be structured so that all shareholders receive advanced notice. Contrary to the management text, there is no incentive for confusion with written consent because confusion leads to support for management and the status quo. And management now suspiciously claims that it's more in favor of a special shareholder meeting at a time that shareholder meetings are losing their impact with the onslaught of online shareholder meetings. For instance, the Kohl's annual meeting last week was nine minutes and AT and T would not even let shareholders speak at two consecutive online shareholder meetings. Management promotes the fallacy that shareholders should be complacent about improving management accountability to shareholders with this proposal simply because we have an average list of standard governance practices that a lot of other companies have.
The unfortunate attitude of management is that since Xerox is average, the Xerox management goal is to block improvement on management accountability to shareholders. Please vote yes, adopt a mainstream shareholder right written consent proposal five.
Thank you for presenting your proposal, Mr. Chavetin. Operator, please close Mr. Chavetin line. I call for the vote on the shareholder proposal for shareholder action by written consent as provided in the proxy statement for this annual meeting.
The Board has recommended a vote against this proposal for the reasons stated in the proxy statement. Are there any questions or remarks concerning this proposal? We have received no questions or remarks regarding this proposal. We will proceed to the final proposal. Proposal six, election of Eris as Director. I move for the election of Eris
Kakejian for a one year term as Director as provided in the supplement to proxy statement dated 04/26/2021. Are there any questions or remarks concerning this proposal? Okay. We've received no questions or remarks regarding this proposal. The discussion of the proposals and resolutions is now concluded and we will proceed to the voting.
Ladies and gentlemen, the polls are now open. If there is any shareholder would like to vote now, please submit your vote online so that we can make sure your vote is counted. I'm informed by the inspector of election that no further votes are being submitted. I now declare the polls closed. I will next present the report of the Inspector of Election.
The Inspector of Election has presented his preliminary report to me and he has determined that each proposal presented at this meeting has received at least 50% of the votes cast for the proposal, except for proposal number three regarding compensation of our named executive officers, which received less than 50% of the votes cast for approval. For the election of the directors pursuant to proposals one and six, this satisfies the majority vote requirement for the election of each of these directors. I declare that all of the directors nominated by the board under proposals one and six have been elected. The selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2021 has been ratified. The 2020 compensation of our named executive officers has not been approved.
The amendment and restatement of the company's equity compensation plan for non employee directors has been approved. The shareholder proposal concerning shareholders acting by written consent has been approved. Now back to Mr. Coza to close the meeting.
Thanks, Doug. There being no further business to come before the meeting, the meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much for being with us today.
There will now be a fifteen minute general question and answer period where shareholder questions and comments submitted prior to and during the meeting will be addressed. Question one. The question one is from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. The question reads, Mr. Chairman, the Carpenter Funds hold a total of 317,400 shares of the company's stock.
We believe that the company's executive compensation plan should drive execution of the Board's long term strategic business plan. Today's public company executive compensation plans are largely formulaic peer related plans with simplistic annual say on pay voting reinforcing plan homogeneity. Would you could you or the compensation committee chair speak to how the compensation plan is uniquely designed to focus the leadership team on the execution of this of the company's new strategic plan? Thank you. And we will ask Cheryl Crongaard, one of our directors, the Chair of our Compensation Committee to please answer this question.
Operator, would you please open Ms. Crongaard's line?
Thank you. We agree with your assessment that executive compensation should be aligned with the long term strategic plan of the company. And to that end, 75% of our executive compensation is variable and based on performance. In 2018, we did, hire John Visentin as our new Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of Xerox. And he quickly assessed the strengths and challenges within Xerox.
And in the first quarter of twenty nineteen, at an investor conference outlined a long term strategic plan. It basically had four planks, simplify the organization, optimize and save valuable cash, focus on revenue growth, and reenergize innovation. To that effect, the metrics in both the short term and the long term plan are aligned completely with this strategic plan. And as facts and circumstances change each year, well actually continually, the senior executive team and senior management team evaluate strategy. And to the extent that our strategy should shift our metrics also will shift to align performance and remuneration.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will move to the next question now. The rules of the meeting state that there's one question per shareholder. So we are moving to the next shareholder with a question. And the question comes from Thomas Rucker.
And the question is, would the company consider virtual access to future in person meetings for those shareholders who are unable to attend?
Hi, this is Louis Pastor, the Chief Corporate Development Officer and Chief Legal Officer of the company. As a New York company, we are required to have our meetings in person by law. That's something that an exception was provided for in the last two years due to the pandemic. But we are willing and open to consider providing virtual access in addition, and we will look into it.
Thank you very much. Now moving to the next question. Are there any more questions? Just the first. The next question is from Mr.
Leslie Whitehead. The question is, will management commit to limiting themselves to encouraging our employees to get the COVID vaccine? Operator, will you please open Ms. Lorna Wade's line?
Morning. Doug, can you hear me?
Yes, we can. Thank you.
Good morning and thank you, Wesley, for your question. At this moment we are highly encouraging, our employees, and offering education and information sessions for, these employees to listen and learn about the vaccine. We are offering this broadly. And at this point, we are not requiring it, but may do so in future. Thank you for your questions.
Thank you for your answer. We have no more questions in the queue. Each shareholder having been able to ask one question. So the meeting is now concluded. Thank you very much for participating in Xerox's twenty twenty one Annual Meeting of Shareholders.
Operator, you may terminate the call.
This concludes the meeting. You