Audience with Danny Wilson

[ron dodgers]

I love carte-blanche, it's most tasty.

[horlock07]

Isn't any AGM essentially essentially pointless as the board own enough shares to basically force everything through before the meeting anyway.

However didn't they say that they would have meetings anyway to update??

[pauld]

Using the term "known to favour" I think is fair enough. Whether this becomes a reality, we'll have to wait and see....I'm hoping not.

But you only told half the story and in so doing, gave an extremely lop-sided picture

We cannot give this Board carte-blanche, because they're not Diamand Mike...

Absolutely right there. This, or any other, board still needs to be seen to be running things well, and taking their custodianship of our club in the best interests of the club. And you're also right that just because they ain't Mikey and cronies doesn't mean everything suddenly converts into a land of milk and honey. There is indeed still much to be put right and Fitton and co haven't and won't get everything right and they shouldn't be considered beyond criticism for ever more just because they're not blatant incompetents/crooks. That said, I'd agree with Andrew that recently it's seemed like in pointing out some of the problems, you've been veering towards the "Just as bad as ever" line which is patently balderdash. Along which lines, the CVA should finally be lifted shortly as Andronikou has finally got round to distributing the cash he's been sat on since May to the creditors.

[pauld]

Isn't any AGM essentially essentially pointless as the board own enough shares to basically force everything through before the meeting anyway.

In terms of actual motions yes however it has proved a very useful mechanism in recent years of holding the board to account or at least of exposing their blatant incompetence/lying to shareholders etc. There's some examples in the thread that was kicked off on here around the time of the last AGM when the proposal to do away with them was discussed. Or just ask Sandy Gray and Holt how much they enjoyed the AGMs!

However didn't they say that they would have meetings anyway to update??

They withdrew the proposal to get rid of AGMs altogether after suggestions from the floor that if they wished to dispense with the legal formal requirement to hold an AGM per se, they could be replaced with mandatory (ie written into the club's articles of association) shareholder meetings at which x% of the board would have to be present and which would have to be held on a regular yearly cycle. Which would amount to the same thing for all intents and purposes but would remove the legal penalties under which the old board used to regularly incur fines. So they would still be required to hold AGM-like meetings but would avoid incurring fines if the next meeting happened to straddle a calendar year boundary (e.g. you hold AGM in Dec, if you hold the next one the following Jan +1, even though you're only a few weeks late, you get fined). Clearly if you're going to put something like that in the Articles of Association, it wasn't going to be feasible to draft something on the floor of the AGM so they withdrew the proposal altogether and agreed to incorporating mandatory shareholder meetings in a re-written AofA to be prepared for the next AGM.

A lot of businesses have taken the option to opt out of AGMs altogether, as a cost and admin-saving measure, including many football clubs. To my knowledge, ours is the only one to listen to arguments from shareholders and withdraw a proposal they could, as you say, have forced through.  Which is why Reg's characterisation of this as "they want to get rid of AGMs" is quite away from telling the whole truth

[leefer]

I love carte-blanche, it's most tasty.

Shes great in Corrie too.

[Reg Smeeton]

Which is why Reg's characterisation of this as "they want to get rid of AGMs" is quite away from telling the whole truth

Naughty Paul...this is your characterisation of my words, that the current Board are known not to favour AGM's.  After all James Wills is still on the Board and he never went anywhere near a meeting.

[Nemo]

After all James Wills is still on the Board and he never went anywhere near a meeting.

Wills is on the board as his dad still owns some (20% ish?) of the shares no? I'm fairly sure he has sod all to do with running the club.

[Reg Smeeton]

Wills is on the board as his dad still owns some (20% ish?) of the shares no? I'm fairly sure he has sod all to do with running the club.

He will get a vote on key policy decisions though, along with the other Directors.

[Simon Pieman]

Strangely Wills was at the last AGM. He looked so out of his depth whenever Fitton asked him a question it was actually quite funny. Unfo4rtunately he was re-elected by the majority of voters.

I must admit I did not think an AGM would be so useful to a minority shareholder, but after attending the previous one I can definitely see the benefit of an annual meeting.

Naughty Paul...this is your characterisation of my words, that the current Board are known not to favour AGM's.  After all James Wills is still on the Board and he never went anywhere near a meeting.

Reg you should become a politician. You're pretty good at putting negative spin on the 'opposition'.

[Reg Smeeton]

Reg you should become a politician. You're pretty good at putting negative spin on the 'opposition'.

I've done my stint in politics and have no desire to resume...anyway I regard PD as a comrade, rather than opposition.

[pauld]

Naughty Paul...this is your characterisation of my words, that the current Board are known not to favour AGM's.

My apologies, although your formulation omits so much of the actual story, it's a far worse distortion of the facts than my paraphrase. For someone so keen on AGMs, I'm surprised you weren't there

[pauld]

I've done my stint in politics and have no desire to resume...anyway I regard PD as a comrade, rather than opposition.

I'm glad to hear it! Careful with that word "comrade" you'll have Oberfuhrer Ironside on our case, although I suspect we're already both on the "First against the wall list" anyway.

[Reg Smeeton]

My apologies, although your formulation omits so much of the actual story, it's a far worse distortion of the facts than my paraphrase. For someone so keen on AGMs, I'm surprised you weren't there

Quite simply too fucking early on a Saturday morning...out on the lash on Friday night means nothing is going to happen much before about 1:00 on a Sat, unless of course it involves some sort of pleasure.

I've done enough AGM's to know they're fairly low down on the hedonism scale.

[pauld]

I've done enough AGM's to know they're fairly low down on the hedonism scale.

You missed out, this year they covered us all in whipped cream and lashed us into a frenzy. Nah, it's a reasonable shout.