Marcus Agius, the chairman of Barclays, suffered the biggest revolt of any FTSE 100 chairman seeking reelection in at least five years after 16.3 per cent of shareholders voted against his reappointment yesterday. The extent of the revolt, led by Legal & General, underlines just how investors continue to feel about the bank’s controversial £7 billion fundraising last summer. Barclays side-stepped their traditional preemption rights and offered more favourable investment terms to a Middle Eastern consortium, angering many shareholders who would have liked to have participated in the capital raising. David Paterson, head of corporate governance for the National Association of Pension Funds, described the level of shareholder dissent as “an unusually high vote” and said that any revolt representing more than 10 per cent of the votes contained a message. Peter Montagnon, director of investment affairs for the Association of British Insurers, said: “Last year there was clear concern over the way in which the company chose to raise new capital. This vote is a reminder that shareholders will react if preemption rights are ignored.” In the past year an average of 2 per cent of shareholders have voted against the reelection of a FTSE 100 company chairman, according to Manifest Information Services, a proxy voting agency that keeps track of resolutions at annual meetings. The second biggest revolt against a chairman in the past five years was against Willy Strothotte at Xstrata, with 11.4 per cent voting against his reappointment last May. Speaking to about 1,000 investors at the bank’s annual shareholders’ meeting yesterday, Mr Agius acknowledged that the fundraising had strained relations with shareholders and expressed “sincere regret” for losses incurred by investors during the past year. John Varley, Barclays’ chief executive, whose reelection was opposed by 1.64 per cent of shareholders, gave an upbeat assessment of the bank’s fortunes. He described Barclays first-quarter performance as well ahead of a year ago with “good profits”. Mr Varley announced plans for Barclays to resume paying dividends in the second quarter after scrapping them in the past financial year. However, he said that future payments, which will be quarterly rather than half-yearly, would be “significantly lower than the 50 per cent [of profits] level of recent years”. He added that Barclays would increase lending to UK customers by £11 billion, or 6 per cent, this year to £194 billion. Legal & General, which has a 4 per cent stake in Barclays, is understood to have voted against reelection of Mr Agius. L&G declined to comment. ，英语论文题目，英语论文 |
