scheme voting

BOW s/h s/be aware of the ESG voting patterns, because they are relevant to the BOW situation.

the voting pattern wrt ESG scheme is interesting.

the total number of shares voted was approx 500m out of about 900m on issue - so about 56% shares were voted.

the total number of shareholders who voted approx 2,750. As at last Top20 in Sept AR? there were about 10,000 s/h registered.

so based on those numbers only about 27.5% of s/h even bothered to vote!

Now that compares with 56% of the SHARES voted.

part of this may be explained by the fact that there has been all sorts of funny buggers being played with ESG shares, and institutions buying up shares prior to vote. 9and of course that is also happening with BOW).

so that number of s/holders would have dropped substantially prior to the vote, and conversely, that would explain why there was a much higher % of shares voted.

its very relevant to BOW.

remember, for the Scheme to take effect, BOW needs 75% approval by number of shares VOTED, and 50% by number of individual SHAREHOLDERS voting. And that includes proxies.


every time an institution buys out a small s/h, that represents a reduction in the potential voting power of the smaller s/h, and a transfer of power to influence the voting outcome, to the bigger s/h!


So Water Island's holding takes on much greater relevance because:
- they are reducing the number of individual shareholders
- their holding of 6.09% takes on a far greater significance when we can expect that only around 50% of the shares of BOW will be voted at the Scheme meeting ie so a 6% holding may have a 12% effect on the voting outcome.

and, by way of interest, in the case of ESG, those numbers of s/h voting (that 27% only) was AFTER a campaign by a shareholders action group and media attention!

so the intentions of funds like Water Island are going to be crucial to the outcome.

clearly, if the smaller s/h want a higher offer, they are going to have to get off our collective bums.

there is no way Shell will increase their offer unless they are FORCED to.

cheers