The Hindu Business Line : Some business, more showbiz

Dark, angry clouds gather overhead as we race toward the Bud Walton arena at the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville, Arkansas. We hear people whispering something about a tornado. The wind is getting blustery as thousands of people – Wal-Mart shareholders and associates, as its employees are called — stream into the arena. It’s just 6 o’clock in the morning, crack of dawn for many us, and everybody is getting ready for the 37th annual shareholders meeting of the world’s largest corporation.

Inside, the mood is festive, with 18,000 seats all filled; the turbulent weather outside forgotten. A rock band is belting it out at a corner of the massive stage against a backdrop of an enormous screen. (Some days earlier, Wal-Mart had hosted a concert by the Eagles for its employees at the same venue.) With a couple of minutes to go to 7 a.m., the band stops to let the events begin – Wal-Mart time, as it is referred to, as that’s when the stores open.

We, an Indian media team, apart from huge contingents from South America and Japan, have no real inkling of the four-hour extravaganza that’s going to unfold. Was it an annual shareholders’ meeting or not? Well, kind of, because between rock bands, a stunning gymnastics show, with stars of US superhit shows such as Disney’s High School Musical and the latest American Idol, Jordin Sparks, performing for thousands of shareholders and employees and rounded off with a high-octane performance by Jennifer Lopez, a succession of Wal-Mart top honchos, including the President & CEO, Lee Scott, came on stage to talk about the numbers of the world’s top corporation.

And when the Chairman, Rob Walton, a son of founder Sam Walton, shepherded the company’s shareholder proposals, it was one of the few times the cavernous auditorium did not reverberate to music, song and dance.

It was a show meant to dazzle and entertain and take some heat off the company which has been facing criticism for slowing growth in the US markets, its healthcare benefits for its employees, wage suits and is engaged in a high-profile legal battle with its former top marketing communications executive who it fired in December last. Chairman Walton acknowledged that it had been a tough year for the retailer but made his support known in public for Wal-Mart’s embattled CEO Scott.

“The board and the Walton family have absolute confidence in you leadership, Lee,” announced Walton to huge cheers from the thousands of associates gathered. According to a Reuters news report, the company’s stock prices has fallen 23 per cent since Scott was named CEO in 2000, though it gained some ground on announcements by the retailer that it was cutting back on its US expansion plans and would buy back $ 15 billion of its own stock.

The four-hour extravaganza also had associates from all the 13 countries that Wal-Mart operates in. Given the India interest, there was also a small India contingent of Wal-Mart-ians who cheered raucously when the Vice-Chairman, Michael Duke, called the country names out.

Singer Jennifer Lopez, who performed at the shareholders’ meet.

Flag-bearing employees from each country, wearing traditional clothes, wove their way through the arena. There was more, with Chinese dragons on stage, a Brazilian Samba and Spanish dancers from South America.

The show, with a popular US stand-up comedian, Sinbad, as the master of ceremonies — he had the house down with his digs at the Wal-Mart culture — had its sober moments with a film on Helen Walton, founder Sam Walton’s wife, screened. She passed away in April this year.

A succession of Wal-Mart employees were rewarded for their heroism, the most gripping of which was the story of a boy from Sudan, James Garang, whose parents were killed in gunfire and who was shot himself and taken for dead, but who survived and now works in a Wal-Mart in the US.

Tom Schoewe, Wal-Mart’s CFO, who himself arrived on stage as part of a gymnastics show with a breathless backdrop of rainfall projected on the enormous on-stage screen, gave the business end of the meet some momentum when he announced that the retailer will cut down on growth of its enormous Supercentres which have been the engine of its growth so far.

The business part of the AGM got over with Lee Scott on stage, who promised he was the last speaker, making an aggressive speech where he said that Wal-Mart’s plan will improve growth. “We need to make changes,” in US Wal-Mart stores, Scott told investors. “We just have to work our way through these difficulties.”

Wire agencies later report the company said it mis-stepped by adding fashionable and upscale clothing to too many stores. “We have to earn the right,” to sell more expensive and high-quality items to customers, Scott told analysts separately later. The company will proceed more gradually and thoughtfully in adding those items, he said.

However, it was not a day for Wal-Mart’s top brass to be glum. The show was meant to pump up the spirits. To a huge and sustained roar from the audience, Scott said the retailer was back as numero uno on the Fort une list. He ended by emphasising Wal-Mart’s credo: saving people money so they can live better. After that, it was back to showtime, with J Lo electrifying the stage.

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