Veteran small-cap fund manager Paul Jourdan’s attempt to get on the board of Maven Renovar (MRV), the former Amati AIM VCT that sacked him and his company last year, has failed with around 60% of votes against him and fellow requisitionists at a general meeting of shareholders today.
Chair Fiona Wollocombe, who has been under fire from some shareholders over the decision to appoint venture capital manager Maven Capital Partners, said the board would look at clawing back its costs from Amati. She said this could include a reduction in the £1.1m termination fee paid to Amati two months before Jourdan and his other nominees to the board requisitioned the meeting.
“It is regrettable that, owing to the legal obligations imposed by the requisition and the efforts the board has made to ensure that as many shareholders as possible were able to have their say, costs have been incurred by the company which will, unfortunately, be borne by shareholders through the company’s NAV [net asset value],” Wollocombe said.
The £89m venture capital trust said turnout at the meeting was around double that of its annual general meeeting this year and the highest on record. Approximately 29m votes were cast against the requisitionists by around 1,500 shareholders, it said, which represented a margin of over 8.6m shares and meant around five times the number of shareholders voted in support of the board than those who voted for the requisitioned resolutions.
“Despite representing only 5.19% of shareholders and despite not having shared their proposals with the board or the company’s wider shareholder base prior to voting against the board at the AGM and lodging the requisition, the requisitioners have consistently claimed to speak on behalf of a majority. Today it was made clear that that is not the case,” said Wollocombe.
The chair claimed that following “constructive engagement” by the board some of Jourdan’s 37 co-requistionists had abstained or voted against some of the eight resolutions that sought to appoint him and Kathleen McLeay, Hector Kilpatrick and Charles McMicking as directors.
She said there would be further engagement with shareholders over a potential tender offer at the end of the year to enable investors who did not want to be invested with Maven to get back the full value of their money.
Wollocombe said the board and Maven would continue their efforts on improving the company’s performance and generating returns for shareholders without distraction.
In a statement Jourdan, McLeay, Kilpatrick and McMicking noted the “substantial support” they had received but said they respected the majority decision, adding they had felt it was important for the wider shareholder base to consider an alternative strategy.
“We did what we could to get our message out to all shareholders, but in the event this proved to be extremely difficult. We are now keen that this episode be marked as closed,” they said.
