AGM votes to keep Hale as Chairman

11 November 1999

Tony Hale has remained in place as West Bromwich Albion plc Chairman following tonight's AGM. While the majority of motions were approved by shareholders on a show of hands, those to re-elect Hale and fellow Director Don Colston were close enough to warrant a full ballot, which was counted while the meeting proceeded and announced near the end. The results of the two ballots were as follows:

Motion	For	Against
Re-election of Tony Hale	35,698	10,234
Re-election of Don Colston	39,615	6,165

What is of note here is that Paul Thompson, who abstained from the vote, would have been able to remove Hale from the Board this time around. Thompson would have been able to add a total of 26,223 votes to the "Against" giving 36,457 and hence defeating it (this would have brought the total number of votes cast to 72,155 - around 81% of the total issued).

What this means, in real terms, is that Tony Hale is considerably less popular now with the minority shareholders than he was at the time of the EGM - taking away the blocs belonging to himself, Waldron and Brandrick shows that only 8,291 ordinary votes were placed in favour of keeping him; at the time of the EGM, the corresponding figure was 15,422 - very nearly TWICE as many. A similar argument could be applied to the numbers of votes cast against him on both occasions, although the change is far less drastic - taking Thompson's votes out of the EGM figures, the number in favour of removing Hale from the Board has dropped from 11,603 to 10,234. Not that, without Thompson's bloc, it made the slightest difference...

Previous Stories:

  21 October 1999:  Annual Report published and AGM Announced

  29 December 1995:  Taylor future in question

  23 November 1995:  Two signings!

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