At the AGM, there were 53,424,438 million votes against the re-election of Paul Cholakos. Therefore, a group of shareholders tried to remove the only independent director by stealth. But for the vote required for the restructure of the JV, there could have been many shareholders that would not have voted (last AGM, votes were recorded for about about 55 million shares).
My mind has now turned to who were these shareholders. I assume that they included the shareholders requisitioning the meeting to remove Paul Cholakos. But which other shareholders?
I looked at the top 20 shareholders in the annual report. The SG Hiscock shares are part of the HSBC Custody Nominees shares (see change of substantial shareholder interest dated 21 May 2019). I had originally assumed the over shareholders where those associated with Silvergate Capital (approx 21M shares). But the requisitioning shareholders only hold 23 million shares. Therefore, there was still another 10 million shares that voted to remove Paul Cholakos - or 30 million shares if the Silvergate Capital shares did not vote to remove Paul Cholakos. Either way, there appears to have been some coordinated effort before the AGM to remove Paul Cholakos without most shareholders being aware that other shareholders were trying to remove the only remaining independent director on the board.
CAP Price at posting:
3.7¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
