Guiness Peat called another - supposedly final - Extraordinary Shareholder Meeting earlier this week [Weds iirc] to seek another vote on their takeover bid for the racecourse. They were comprehensively routed, and so amazed by this that they issued a statement to that effect
Big vote of confidence for Newbury Board
Published: 20/03/2008 (Sport) By Howard Wright
THE board of Newbury racecourse was given a substantial vote of confidence yesterday, when shareholders voted almost two to one to defeat an attempt to remove three directors, including chairman Sir David Sieff, from the board, and to demand a vote on a £45 million redevelopment scheme.
A voting turn out of around 88 per cent delighted Sieff and fellow at-risk directors Nicholas Jones and Brian Stewart-Brown, and caught the opposing camp of majority shareholder the Guinness Peat Group by surprise.
Sieff said: "The amount of votes demonstrates Newbury shareholders are, by and large, extremely loyal and want us to carry on doing what we have been doing, which is put on quality racing and build up a successful leisure and conference facility."
For GPG, which called the extraordinary meeting after failing in a hostile takeover bid, UK executive director Blake Nixon said: "The more people who voted, the more difficult it was going to be for us, but I'm still surprised at the level of turnout, and at the support for the board."
Around 40 corporate and individual shareholders attended the meeting and on the resolutions to remove Sieff, Jones and Stewart-Brown, the three GPG representatives, wielding 910,000 shares, or nearly 30 per cent of the total issue, stood out in their support. GPG was defeated on a show of hands, in line with proxy voting. Percentage opposition among proxies dipped slightly on a fourth resolution, to add a second GPG nominee to the board.
On the final issue, in which GPG called for shareholders to be allowed to vote on the proposal to enter into a joint venture with David Wilson Homes to fund redevelopment, the proxy no-vote settled at around 60.8 per cent.
Despite an apparent overwhelming defeat on the show of hands, GPG's Nixon prolonged the exercise by calling for a poll to be taken on the last resolution, with 1.645m no-votes beating 1.057m in favour.
Sieff said: "I'm very satisfied with the outcome, but not the whole process, which has been costly, tiring and incredibly time-consuming. I feel most sorry for the racecourse executives and their team, who have had to cope with this at the same time as developing the business. They have been marvellous."
Sieff said that the board and executives would now resume the process of developing the joint-venture scheme, but added: "We have to be aware of the views of GPG, which remains our biggest shareholder - we'll have to find a way to reconciliation."