Give us say on Unilever move

Marmite-maker blasted for ‘complicated’ ballot on abandoning UK HQ

ORDINARY shareholders are racing to secure a fair say on unilever’s plans to quit Britain, as a vote on the move threatens to descend into farce.

Individual savers who hold unilever stock through online investment platforms are bombarding them with requests to vote on the proposal.

criticism of the way the unilever ballot is being carried out grew last night, with wealth manager Brewin Dolphin warning it is too complicated.

Marmite maker unilever is planning to axe its uK headquarters and base itself solely in the Netherlands, with a crunch vote due next month.

the company must win support from investors holding 75pc of shares on the London stock Exchange.

separately, it must also be backed by more than 50pc of voting shareholders, regardless of how much stock they each have. this theoretically gives ordinary savers as much power as giant pension funds. But individual investors who hold their shares through a socalled nominee account online with Barclays, Hargreaves Lansdown and other platforms are being denied this right.

instead, each platform will only be counted as a single investor, despite the fact that they represent tens of thousands of ordinary people.

only savers who convert their online stock to a paper share certificate will be counted individually.

Veteran city analyst David Buik, of core spreads, said: ‘the whole thing to me is a complete nonsense. it’s laughable.’

Barclays, whose smart investor arm is one of the biggest platforms for shareholders, is now scrambling to give investors certificates after being inundated with angry calls. A spokesman said: ‘there is increased interest from clients in the unilever event. We are working to accelerate the process of getting certificates issued by the unilever registrar.’

unilever claims the headquarters move will make the firm simpler. But the voting rules have sparked fury due to fears shareholder democracy is being undermined.

Guy Foster, head of research at Brewin Dolphin, said: ‘A proposed vote on simplification should not really require a handful of electronic nominee holdings to be converted into hundreds of thousands of certificated holdings.’

unilever insists it is unable to change the voting rules for legal reasons.