Lumi, the global leader in the provision of technology to facilitate the smooth running of AGMs, has today announced the launch of Lumi Middle East. This brings the total number of Lumi offices to ten countries.

Based in the Silicon Oasis free zone in Dubai, Lumi has appointed Yousef Abu Al Qaren as its new regional Managing Director. Yousef and the team have many years of experience in running AGMs in Dubai, and commented “My team and I are delighted to be joining Lumi. We recognized the huge opportunity to grow in this region and with the years of experience and development that has gone into Lumi’s technology, we can really capitalize on the demand in this market for electronic, hybrid and virtual AGMs”.

There has been much discussion and debate around the rise of hybrid and virtual AGMs and the rate of adoption has increased significantly in the last 12 months. Across the globe, shareholder engagement remains a core topic with many issuers seeing the opportunity to offer remote AGM participation alongside an in-room shareholder meeting as a key tool to achieve this.

Lumi is widely recognised as being at the forefront of this adoption, having delivered Dubai’s first hybrid meeting for DP World earlier this year, as well as having facilitated the UK’s first fully virtual AGM for Jimmy Choo in 2016.

This expansion is seen as significant for Lumi in a region which is demonstrating a rapid move towards greater digitalization. Richard Taylor, CEO, believes that there is a very clear appetite in the region for the Lumi proposition. “We are always looking to expand geographically and the Middle East represents a really exciting opportunity for Lumi to continue to increase our global presence. Greater shareholder engagement and dematerialization are high on the agendas of many of the organizations in this region, and we look forward to supporting meetings with a local team benefitting from the Lumi world leading AGM technology platform.”