At the forthcoming Annual General Meeting of Gore Street Energy Storage Fund (GSF) in addition to the usual resolutions shareholders are asked to approve a “whitewash” of the illegal past payments of dividends (`resolution 15). This regularly happens when a company fails to file a statement of distributable reserves at Companies House showing it has sufficient reserves to cover the dividend. It seems to happen about once per year to my holdings for example. In fact it happens so often that one would have thought the company directors and auditors would be careful to check that issue before the dividend is approved.
It is interesting to note the number of jobs or roles that the directors have in this company. The Chairman Patrick Cox seems to have a multitude of appointments – too many to be detailed in fact. Likewise Caroline Banksy, who chairs the Audit Committee has 5 directorships and the other directors are not short of positions either.
Personally I think the work involved in being a director or a public company means that it is difficult to do the job properly if someone has more than 3 or 4 such commitments. Maybe that is why the issue of the dividend payment was overlooked.
There is no reason to vote against resolution 15 but I think shareholders should consider whether they should vote “FOR” all the directors.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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