Novavest: Extraordinary General Meeting votes against changes

The Extraordinary General Meeting of Novavest, at which proposals from the MV Immoxtra Switzerland Fund were discussed, took place on Friday last week. All of the minority shareholder's proposals were rejected. A total of 6.3 million or 62% of the company's total outstanding shares were represented at the AGM. Of the votes cast, 61% were cast against the removal of the current Chairman of the Board of Directors Thomas Sojak, while almost the same number of votes were cast against the removal of Board members Stefan Hiestand and Daniel Ménard. Conversely, the proposed election of Cyrill Schneuwly, Ueli Kehl and Roland Vögele to the Board of Directors was also rejected by the Annual General Meeting with 66%, 58% and 59% respectively. The proposed amendment to the Articles of Association with regard to the capital band - this proposal concerned higher hurdles for future capital increases - was rejected by 61% of the votes cast.

MV Immoxtra most recently held a good 15% of Novavest's capital. Its advisor MV Invest had accused the Novavest management of deficiencies in corporate governance and a loss of confidence in the management as the reason for the unsatisfactory share price performance (IB reported). There was also criticism that Novavest's structure with management contracts was not in the interests of the shareholders. Novavest countered with the accusation that the minority shareholder was planning a "cold takeover of control".

Novavest sees the votes as confirmation of its view and emphasizes that, excluding the shares of MV Immoxtra, between 80% and 90% of the shares represented followed the proposals of the existing Board of Directors. In the run-up to the AGM, Novavest had announced that two proxy advisors had advised shareholders to vote against MV Immoxtra's proposals. These were the international proxy advisors ISS and Glass Lewis. (aw)