Norges Bank has increased its stake in Shaftesbury to 25.06%, meaning it is now able to vote down special resolutions brought forward by the firm at AGMs.
Special resolutions require 75% shareholder approval to pass. Shaftesbury’s largest shareholder, Sammy Tak Lee, has frequently used his 26.03% stake to vote these down.
See also: Groundhog Day for Shaftesbury and Tak Lee?
The news follows Shaftesbury’s AGM last month where Samuel Tak Lee failed in his bid to stop the reappointment of the firm’s chairman Jonathan Nicholls, chief executive Brian Bickell, and finance director Chris Ward.
However, he did manage to block the firm’s ability to allot shares in certain circumstances for the second consecutive year as it needed 75% of the votes cast in favour, but he was unable to block a general rights issue to all of its shareholders, which requires 50% of votes in favour.
Now Norges and Lee hold over 50% of Shaftesbury’s total equity, they would technically be able to jointly defeat normal resolutions.
Tak Lee considers a share placing carried out by Shaftesbury in December 2017 to have been conducted improperly and has since voted partially successfully against allowing the company to do so again.
In a statement after the company’s AGM, a representative for Tak Lee said: “Unless Mr Lee gets a satisfactory response in relation to the concerns he has raised with the board, he will be left with no choice but to litigate and, given the board’s unsatisfactory responses to date, at present this appears unavoidable.”
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