Paris (AFP)
Arnaud Lagardère won on Tuesday the showdown which opposed him to the first shareholder in his group, the activist fund Amber Capital, whose resolutions submitted to the general meeting were rejected.
The managing partner of the publishing and distribution group in transport locations, also influential in the media, welcomed an "absolute" vote in favor of management and its strategy, and retains a board surveillance favorable to current governance, noted an AFP journalist.
The 15 resolutions tabled by Amber, which claims 18% of the capital and 14% of the voting rights, were rejected by at least 57% of the votes, while the poll had a participation rate of 79.1%, significantly higher important than usual.
Over the past few months, the fund has continued to denounce Arnaud Lagardère's strategic choices and his management of the group. He wanted to replace almost all of the members of the supervisory board and was aiming for the non-renewal of his mandate as manager in March 2021.
The resolutions tabled by the management to ratify the recent cooptations of Nicolas Sarkozy and the former boss of the SNCF Guillaume Pepy to the supervisory board were more than 99% approved.
Source close to the file, the former head of state, longtime friend of Arnaud Lagardère, was at work to assure Mr. Lagardère of the support of the sovereign fund of Qatar, which holds 20% of the rights of vote.
The major maneuvers to oppose Amber's project were also marked by the arrival in the capital of Vincent Bolloré, the strong man of Vivendi, who claimed the acquisition of more than 10% of the shares, nourishing the rumors about an operation to negotiate support for Arnaud Lagardère in exchange for the abandonment of the status of the group limited by shares.
"No project of this kind, even an exploratory one, has ever been neither submitted nor presented to the supervisory board," replied the secretary general and co-manager of the Pierre Leroy group, questioned by a shareholder.
© 2020 AFP