The Covid crisis has also affected the AGM season. As a result Beiersdorf AG, our long-standing customer and DAX-listed company, was forced to plan an alternative to its already scheduled AGM in the Hamburg exhibition halls. This made Beiersdorf AG the second company in German history, after Bayer AG, to hold a virtual AGM. Those responsible decided to keep the already planned date and virtualise the event from their own auditorium for shareholders by livestream.
The biggest challenge was probably to comply with the strict social distancing and hygiene regulations. Only a maximum of 20 people were now allowed to be present in the auditorium, which has space for 500 participants. For us this meant that the main control room had to be set up in the foyer, with the corresponding work of laying cables. Due to the social distance the staff had to keep, this resulted in an FOH over 16 metres long. As live streaming together with synchronous chart presentation had been part of the AGM in previous years, our team was able to routinely use this experience, which meant that the platform with the streaming service and the operator was already in place. This time the streaming was supplemented by another language with simultaneous interpreting technology.