A shareholder in Irish Residential Properties REIT is urging the company to put itself up for sale and said it will vote against a raft of proposals at the company’s upcoming annual general meeting, telling the company “enough is enough”.
In an open letter to shareholders, Vision Capital Corporation, which owns a 5% stake in IRES, said the company “has increasingly become an ineffective platform and continues to poorly address the interests of both its shareholders and the critical needs of the Irish housing market”.
IRES has said: “The board is reviewing the content of the letter and will respond in due course.”
Vision will vote against the reinstatement of chairman Declan Moylan, chief financial officer Brian Fagan and remuneration committee members Joan Garahy and Tom Kavanagh. It will also vote against an advisory resolution on the report of the remuneration committee on directors’ remuneration. It has urged other shareholders to follow it.
Vision said it has been in dialogue with IRES management since mid-2021 and has encouraged a sale process but that it believes it has been “misled, cajoled, and stymied” in its efforts to address what it perceives as problems within the business.
Vision said: “Vision believes that there exists a distinct and significant opportunity for Ireland should IRES cease to be a public company and continue to operate privately with a different corporate and capital structure, which would have the corresponding benefit of value creation for IRES and its shareholders.
“Notably, the inefficiencies in IRES’ structure, which include several factors, have resulted in the market price of the REIT’s ordinary shares trading at a significant discount to the market value of the real estate it owns and its operating platform.”
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