Club schedule General Meeting of shareholders next month

"Norwich City have issued a notice to the club’s shareholders for a general meeting on Monday, February 13.
The general meeting has been called to allot a number of shares, as the club seeks to strengthen its financial sustainability by reducing the need for borrowings.
Shareholders are welcome to attend the meeting, but given its anticipated short length are also encouraged to vote via proxy.
Further information will follow once the formal business of the meeting has concluded."

 

The general assumption is that this is the next step in the Attanasio's increasing their stake in the club.

 

Caution: I am no expert on this, so take the following with a pinch of salt ........ like you do all my posts ...........

A shareholder posting on the Pink'Un forum, quoting the official notice of the SGM, gives the number of shares to be alloted as 194,512. Assuming all are Ordinary shares, by my calculation, that number would increase the number of Ordinary shares in the club by a little over 1/3rd, which is clearly a significant amount. If all the newly alloted shares were bought by Attanasio, when added to his already sizeable holding (comprised of the shares acquired from Michael Foulger plus any minor share holdings sold to him by others), it would raise Attanasio's holding to well over 30% and, I believe, trigger an offer to buy out the other shareholders. It would also reduce the percentage holding of our current majority shareholders to well below 50%, so their current controlling ownership would be surrendered.
Of course, these newly alloted shares may not all be purchased, or purchased by others apart from the Attanasios, so the effect on existing holdings can only be hypothetical at this stage -- except that their value will inevitably be diluted.

 

I think that 30% threshold triggering an offer to buy out other shareholders was confirmed as part of the structure in place for a previous party interested, but I don't know if it ever became a club statute or otherwise remains in place for the Attanasio's involvement?

There was also talk of a mechanism for Attanasio to convert C-preference shares into some more meaningful ownership, so that might also be a method to take him over 50%?

 

I'm not thrilled with the thought that my club will dissolve into one of Mr Attanasio's sports ball franchises, but unfortunately the self funding club model is heavily reliant on staying in the Premier league, whilst generating money from player sales .

Even with our regular success in gaining promotions, & selling players for a huge profit 2 or 3 seasons in the Championship would pretty much financially cripple the club .

Delia is getting too old & handing it over to her nephew without the money to throw at it would be a disaster .


The thing I'm not happy with is Mr Attanasio wants to take ownership of our club & make a profit, most sugar daddy foreign owners treat it like a play thing sinking millions in knowing they won't get it back.

Norwich own plenty of land that may be extremely lucrative if used to build on & an unscrupulous person could asset strip to get his investment back with little thought for the fans or local area .

I would rather a Saudi oil Sheikh than a Jewish American spiv personally, but beggers can't be choosers

 

That 30% rule is incorporated in national legislation governing takeovers; as I understand it, it applies across the board, whether the company concerned is listed or not. A good recent example of its application in football was at Arsenal during the sparring between Usmanov and Kroenke. Usmanov built up his holding to fractionally under 30%, where he presented a continuing threat while waiting for an opportunity to go for Kroenke's jugular. It never came. Usmanov eventually accepted defeat and sold his holding -- reappearing as the "dark shadow" behind henchman Moshiri's takeover of Everton. Plenty of Arsenal supporters wanted him to rid them of Kroenke, imagining a deluge of riches carrying them to EPL and European glory. Just like Everton I guess ...........

 

Generally speaking it only applies to public companies (whether listed or not - though there are a handful to which it would not apply if not managed/controlled in the UK). It also applies to some other jurisdictions (eg companies from the Isle of Man).

There is the odd occasion where it can apply to a private company (basically where the company shares have been sold or marketed or trading prices made public in the last ten years). That won’t be many out of c.5m private companies in this country.

As Norwich is one of the c.6,000 public companies and the exceptions are narrow, I think you are right that the rule applies.