Convoy thwarts shareholder’s coup attempt, leaving management intact for clean up
Backed by the largest shareholder, Convoy’s interim chairman invalidated the votes of the second-biggest shareholder to thwart his coup attempt.
The management team at Convoy Global Holdings, the troubled financial advisory firm at the centre of a joint investigation by Hong Kong’s anti-graft agency and securities regulator, has averted a showdown with a major shareholder who’s out to dismiss them.
Kwok Hiu-kwan, the second-largest Convoy stakeowner with 29.91 per cent of the company, had called for a shareholders’ meeting on the final trading day of 2017, intending to dismiss a management team led by chairman Johnny Chen Chi-wang, who’s trying to clean up after several executives were arrested and dismissed for investigations. Kwok wanted to install five of his own nominees.
Backed by an even larger shareholder - the Tsai family of Taiwan’s Fubon Financial Holdings, with 29.98 per cent stake - Chen drove Kwok’s representative away after two hours behind closed doors at a rented meeting venue at the Hutchison House building in Hong Kong.
Acting in his capacity as chairman, Chen ruled that Kwok’s votes were invalid at the shareholders’ meeting, because two writs had been filed at the Hong Kong High Court to invalidate those shares.
Kwok was absent from the meeting. His representative, declining to disclose his name, said Chen’s ruling was “unacceptable because the Hong Kong court has not delivered its verdict on the writs. What the chairman did was very rude and uncivilised.”