Today (28/07/2022) I attended the Annual General Meeting of GB Group (GBG) via the Lumi online platform. This worked well as one could both submit questions and vote via the platform. It appeared there were few attendees either physically or on-line as I was the only person who submitted any questions.
I asked why not all directors were up for re-election which is now considered best practice. The answer from the Company Secretary was that this was not a requirement for AIM companies. But that’s a very poor answer.
Secondly I asked about the performance targets for the new Performance Share Plan (PSP) that replaces the previous Annual Bonus and Share Matching Plan. The answer given by Natalie Gammon was they had worked with remuneration consultants to devise the PSP scheme and that it was based 75% on EPS and 25% on TSR. I still don’t like it and consider the change a retrograde move. It awards nil-cost options if performance targets are met. I would have liked to be able to vote against the reappointment of Natalie but all I could do was vote against the PSP and Remuneration resolutions and against the Chairman.
One problem with the Lumi platform is that you can submit questions in writing but there is no easy way to follow up the answers, i.e. there is no interaction as in a physical meeting.
Other than dealing with my questions in a perfunctory manner, the meeting only consisted in the Chairman reading out the statement issued in the morning on an RNS – I will not repeat it here. The meeting was therefore over in 10 minutes. Not a very useful meeting in essence.
GB Group is focussed on digital identity checking and fraud prevention. Coincidentally today I received an email (delayed as it ended up in a spam folder) that advised me that all my personal information provided as part of a VCT subscription application had potentially been accessed illegally via a company providing a service to Albion Capital. Is it not really annoying when one takes great care not to have such information available publicly to find that it has been leaked? I hope that I do not have to change my email address yet again. But it certainly emphasises how important an identity verification service now is.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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