Can anyone tell me how we have allowed someone with 4% shares in the club to have so much power? To be the king maker? It's a scandal and a scandal we all allowed it to happen
We're back to that confusion between ownership and control.
Shareholders own the club.
The board of directors control and manage the club.
The shareholders elect the board of directors.
no confusion I never mentioned ownership, I said power which is control - I guess that was my point about 4% and power
You did - thats what 4% means - you own 4% of Altrincham Football Club.
My point is you could have no shares at all and still be a director with control.
Our shareholders and directors have allowed some with 4% to have far more power and control than they really should given how much he own.
Its irrelevant how many shares a director owns in this discussion.
The shareholders - whoever they may be, elect the board of directors to run the club in their best interests. Thats where shareholder involvement ends.
At the AGM 16 shareholders turned up and supported the current board by re-electing Derek and electing Bill.
The board of directors then run the club/business together as they see fit - I've not seen the internal constitution of the board rules but I assume within a board meeting the directors have an equal say and vote in any decisions, possibly a casting vote from the chairman if there is a tie.
You may disagree with the shareholders appointment of directors - but that is their choice as they own the club.
You may disagree with the directors running of the club - but again it is their remit to run the club as best they see fit and make many decisions each year to do so.
And here lies the issue.
There were over 250 shareholders eligible to attend this years AGM. Only 16 turned up.
Excluding Grahame Rowley himself, there are currently 26 shareholders (of the 250) who personally hold more than 1,000 shares in the club, collectively owning 73% of the currently allocated shares - without counting the shares currently held by the football club itself.
By my reckoning, of these 26 other shareholders, only Karen Rowley bothered to turn up. Monday night wasn’t an endorsement of the status quo by the owners of the football club, it was a another mass show of f**king apathy from them.
That’s not a criticism of those (nominal) shareholders who were present. Far from it. If they hadn’t have turned up then we wouldn’t have even had an AGM.
And once they do turn up they are perfectly entitled to express their opinion and vote in whichever way they see fit, regardless of whether I or anybody else agrees with them or not.
But the real issue isn’t the shareholders who turned up, or how many shares the current chairman holds. The issue is the amount of dormant shares floating about, and the shameful lack of interest from the current major shareholders.
This can, and will, be resolved by the sale of the recently created controlling interest in the football club. With genuine interest, and a bid already received, hopefully this can be sold as soon as possible to ensure the health and optimism of the football club off the field matches the current positivity on it.