LEW CLOSE TO FIRST VICTORY AT MYER
AFTER stalking the Myer board for five years, billionaire retailer Solomon Lew looks to have won a victory with the election of Terrence McCartney to the board of the department store owner.
However, Myer shareholders have also voted in favour of the re-election of Myer chairman JoAnne Stephenson and director Jacquie Naylor, setting up a possibly fractious board as Mr Lew’s candidate and the directors he has challenged for many years sit in the same boardroom.
Mr McCartney, a former boss of Myer Grace Bros, is a director of Mr Lew’s Premier Investments, which is Myer’s biggest shareholder with a stake of 22.87 per cent.
It appears almost certain Mr McCartney will be elected as a director of Myer at the AGM and be privileged to corporate information and commercial operations.
According to votes cast ahead of the Myer annual general meeting in Sydney on Thursday, and released to the ASX, there were around 117.9m (36.85 per cent) votes in favour of his election and 193m votes against.
However, Mr Lew’s Premier Investments is yet to vote its block of shares and will be doing so from the floor of the AGM.
Assuming no other large shareholder turns up at the AGM to vote a block against the agenda item, this should give Mr McCartney almost a 60 per cent vote in favour of his election.
The Myer board did not give shareholders a recommendation on which way to vote, although two proxy adviser firms have recommended a vote against Mr McCartney’s election.
In the notice of meeting for Thursday’s AGM, Myer revealed it had written to Premier Investments on September 7 asking that Mr Lew stop buying shares in the retailer unless he made a takeover offer.