AGM ON 4 AUGUST - THE FORMAL BUSINESS OF THE MEETING
| Kevin
McGrath took the 10 resolutions before the meeting one at
a time, inviting questions and putting each one to the
vote before moving on to the next one. All of the
resolutions were passed by the shareholders. Resolution
1 A shareholder asked about note 27 to the accounts, wondering whether there had been any resolution of the dispute between the club and Harold Winton's company Anaid Holdings. McGrath replied that he believed it had now been sorted out and the club would make an announcement once it was finalised. Harold was invited to comment and launched an impassioned speech from the floor that began "I am the president of this club and would never do anything to harm it." In short, he said that the Wintons had paid for Danny Shittu and for DouDou, and that the dispute had arisen over Marc Bircham where the Wintons' promise to pay Bircham's wages had been conditional on them raising enough money through We Are QPR. Since We Are QPR had folded, the payment of Bircham's wages had reverted to the club. Harold claimed that the club had broken a promise to give him 1 million shares and that Nick Blackburn had gone round telling everybody that the Wintons owed the club money. He described this as heinous and disgusting behaviour. Kevin McGrath responded by saying that Harold Winton is one of a large number of people, such as Dave Morris and Maurice Fitzgerald, who help the club - often behind the scenes. Harold, for example, has recently assisted the club by providing a short-term loan. Another shareholder noted that the plc's auditors had expressed a fundamental uncertainty about whether the plc was a "going concern". McGrath agreed that being a going concern depends on attracting further investment, and added that we have only survived recently because of investment from himself, Bill Power and Gianni Paladini together with loans from himself, Bill Power and Ross Jones. At this point Ross Jones stood up in the audience and said that although the old board had failed to attract investment - and that was why he had resigned - at least promotion to the Championship would bring extra income of £2.5m-£3m. He said that he had come to the meeting because he wanted to give his wholehearted support to the new board and believes they are the right people to take the club forward. Resolution
2 Carried unanimously and without questions. Resolution
3 Carried unanimously and without questions. Kevin McGrath mentioned that within a matter of months Gianni Paladini expects to replace Azeem Malik on the board of directors. Resolution
4 Carried unanimously and without questions. Resolution
5 This was agreed as it stands but the directors also made an undertaking that at each AGM over the next five years they would check that this still met with shareholders' approval. Resolution
6 Some shareholders said they would like to buy more shares and were therefore concerned about this resolution. Kevin McGrath gave a pledge that if any existing shareholders want to buy more shares for 6.5p each the club will sell to them. He said what they are trying to avoid is the expensive exercise of having to write to 5000+ shareholders offering them the opportunity to buy extra shares in proportion to their existing shareholdings. He promised to look into advertising this offer in the matchday programme and on the club's website in the next few weeks. McGrath also said that he didn't mind if this reduced the amount of shares available to a large investor because the new board doesn't want any single individual to have overall control of the club. Tim Krause asked why the board would not sell shares to investors for 3p each and received the reply that this was not a fair price. Again, this resolution was carried with an undertaking from the board that they would come back to the AGM each year to confirm shareholders' approval. Resolutions
7, 8, 9 and 10 Kevin McGrath put forward the board's view first. He said that the name "plc" says stock market and profits, whereas QPR should be "a non profit-making business owned by the QPR family". In an ideal world there would be 100,000 QPR fans all owning one share each. He confirmed that taking the company private would not affect anyone's ownership of shares. Since we delisted from the Stock Exchange there has been no marketplace for selling shares anyway. He said the club would be happy to try and facilitate the transfer of shares from one shareholder to another if possible. At this point McGrath revealed that Chris Wright had originally said he was going to vote against these resolutions but after events and discussions last week had changed his mind and was now voting for them. "Even dear old Nick helped", said McGrath. 99%+ of shareholders had voted with the board on all the resolutions, both those attending the meeting and those who had cast their votes by proxy. |