THE corporate business life of Guyana is old-fashioned and disorderly. This is partially due to the media not giving enough attention to the doings of businesses and companies. The Directors and Executives of many companies seem to break any law or convention at their pleasure. A good example: One of the commercial banks held its annual general meeting on April 13. For the cost of the meeting, management had obviously budgeted for advertising gifts for the membership. Numbers of younger members were given proxies by their inactive or helpless old relatives and friends to attend on their behalf and thus assumed their persona for the meeting. In other words, the proxy holders had every right, power and privilege which the holder of the shares had.
Yet when the proxy holders went to collect on behalf of older relatives, the advertising gifts which had been budgeted for and for which privilege they had a right to, the proxy holders were refused such gifts by management. This meanness evoked a deep groundswell of resentment against the directors and management of the company among the majority of the shareholders present at the meeting.
The hurt of the shareholders who had given proxies could be assuaged if management had telephoned the aggrieved and apologised. It was widely believed by the majority of those who attended the AGM that the culprits who innovated this piece of meanness were the directors and not  management.