The newly merged property empire encompassing swathes of London’s Soho and Covent Garden is dealing with a bruising shareholder row over hundreds of thousands of kilos handed out in govt share awards.
Sky News understands that various main traders plan to vote in opposition to the remuneration report on the annual assembly of the newly fashioned Shaftesbury Capital within the coming months.
City traders are understood to be furious that bosses together with Ian Hawksworth, its chief govt, noticed share grants vest when the merger accomplished.
Shaftesbury Capital was fashioned from the merger of Capital & Counties Properties and Shaftesbury, making a West End landlord which owns a few of London’s landmark purchasing and leisure locations.
Mr Hawksworth ran Capco, which was the buying entity within the merger regardless of being smaller, making the vesting of its share awards uncommon – and controversial throughout a cost-of-living disaster.
In Capco’s 2022 annual report, the corporate mentioned the deal construction had been decided as the best one for shareholders.
“Whilst this structure may have resulted in only Shaftesbury’s share awards being triggered, this would have created an inequitable situation where two groups of employees were to be combined, but only the smaller company’s employees’ share awards would continue, under amended performance targets.
“However, Capco’s share plan guidelines permitted the Committee to deal with the merger as equal to a takeover and subsequently set off the awards, creating equality of therapy, for all staff,” it mentioned.
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A Shaftesbury Capital spokesman declined to remark, though an organization insider mentioned the vesting of the share awards had been absolutely disclosed within the deal prospectus.
He added that the deal had been supported by 97% of Capco shareholders, though he acknowledged that there had not been a separate vote on remuneration.
Source: information.sky.com”