Cat to conduct annual meeting in Wamego, Kansas
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- Published on Wednesday, 11 February 2015 16:42
- Written by Paul Gordon
Caterpillar Inc. will head to the land of Oz for its 2015 annual meeting of shareholders, the company announced Wednesday.
The meeting will be Wednesday, June 10 in Wamego, Kansas, where Caterpillar has a factory that makes buckets, blades and other attachments and employs about 500 people.
The company said proxy statements for the meeting will be available no later than the first week of May to stockholders of record as of April 13, 2015.
After many years of conducting the annual meeting in Chicago, largely for convenient access, Caterpillar in recent years has moved the meeting around to various cities where it has a presence. The 2014 annual meeting was in Corinth, Mississippi, where Caterpillar has its flagship remanufacturing plant.
Chairman and CEO Doug Oberhelman used that location to focus his speech to shareholders on sustainability. Remanufacturing, in which old, used Caterpillar machines and parts are broken down and remanufactured to be like new, is a chief cog in Caterpillar’s sustainability efforts.
“In recent years, we've held our shareholders meetings near our various facilities around the country, giving our Board of Directors, officers and shareholders a chance to tour our operations in addition to the formal meeting,” said Caterpillar spokeswoman Rachel Potts. “Recent stockholders' meetings have been in Corinth, Mississippi, Little Rock, Arkansas, San Antonio, Texas, and Greensboro North Carolina for the same reasons.”
Wamego, Kansas, will be the smallest venue for the company’s annual meeting. With a population of about 4,400 people, it is about 14 miles east of Manhattan, Kansas, the site of Kansas State University, and about 40 miles west of Topeka, the state capitol.
Wamego’s biggest claim to fame may be the Oz Museum, hailed as the largest private collection of “Wizard of Oz” memorabilia in the world, including Dorothy’s dress. The last four digits of the museum’s telephone number spell out Toto and the Oz connection has spurred other merchants to name their establishments in similar manner, such as the Oz Winery and Toto’s Tacoz.
Shareholders who venture to Wamego for the annual meeting can stop in at the Oz Museum for $8.
