Purplebricks has just announced that at its general meeting held at 10am today, 19 December 2022, the resolutions proposed by Lecram Holdings Limited (Lecram) to remove Paul Pindar as chairman and appoint Harry Hill to the board of directors have been rejected by the company’s shareholders, but there was a significant split in the votes.
The final voting position is shown below (inclusive of proxy votes cast prior to and at the general meeting).
|
Resolution |
FOR |
%age FOR |
AGAINST |
%age AGAINST |
Total Votes Cast (excluding Withheld) |
Withheld |
|
To remove Paul Pindar as a director of the Company |
57,255,048 |
28.29% |
145,123,092 |
71.71% |
202,378,140 |
14,670,650 |
|
To appoint Harry Hill as a director of the Company |
90,696,215 |
41.80% |
126,290,411 |
58.20% |
216,986,626 |
62,164 |
The directors acknowledge that whilst both votes were rejected, there was a significant proportion of shareholders that voted in their favour. The directors will continue to engage with shareholders to ensure there is full alignment on the strategy, objectives and most importantly its delivery and, as required under the QCA Corporate Governance Code, will explain any different action it will take as a result of the vote at its full year results.
Helena Marston, CEO, commented: “I want to reassure all shareholders that we understand their concerns. Our past performance has not been good enough. But we have a new team, with an agreed plan that is being delivered at pace. The operational changes implemented over the last four months will be clear for all to see at our final results, in terms of a substantially improved cash and profit performance. We take nothing for granted and we are fully committed to driving improved performance, higher standards and value for all stakeholders.
“The housing market will be what it will be in 2023 but we have a value driven customer proposition, right sized our cost base by £17m, and laid the foundations for a more balanced business with the recent launch of new revenue streams and a plan to grow our lettings business. There is a big opportunity for Purplebricks and we want the opportunity to deliver it.”
This can only be good news for the real estate agents out there, turkeys voting for Christmas never bodes well and this lot have voted for Christmas with a huge Capital C!
With the market as it is, with the cash burn currently and the reserves as they are, the writing is on the wall for PB, is there a book open for when they will eventually disappear?
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Doesn’t Paul Pindar have shares in PB? If so, was he able to vote on whether he got to keep his position, and out of interest what percentage of the total votes cast would that have been?
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And did Paul’s colleagues who hold shares get to vote in secret, or does he get to know who voted for or against him?
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Thank you PIE for your balanced coverage of this story-and through your medium, thank you to all the shareholders holding over 90m shares who voted for me to be appointed to the board. Whilst ever the current Chair had the irrevocable support of Axel Springer (the agenda of whom it is difficult to understand) and his own shares, representing in total over 30% of the company, gaining a majority in favour of change was always going to be near impossible-but certainly encouraged some very active discussions with almost all PB’s major shareholders, most of which voted for change. The UK residential property market is looking at a hard winter and I wish the senior management of the company well.
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