Chapter 1347: This is too exciting!

The listed company regulations stipulate that after the dividend plan is approved at the shareholders' meeting, it must be implemented within two months. The speed of this process depends mainly on the initiative and enthusiasm of the management.

With Justin Kyle's attitude, naturally he would like to see it done as quickly as possible.

However, as there are too many shareholders involved in a listed company, it will ultimately take some time to implement the plan.

Therefore, in order to save time in the entire process and allow Wheelock Shipping to receive the dividend as soon as possible, the pace can only be accelerated at the two links of the board of directors and the shareholders' meeting.

At the board of directors level, all five companies voted overwhelmingly to pass the dividend plan, and everything seemed to be going very smoothly.

Justin Kyle let out a sigh of relief after getting the news, and just waited for the shareholders' meeting to convene and vote to pass the dividend plan.

In his opinion, unless the shareholders were stupid, there was no reason to refuse such a generous dividend. Looking at the entire Hong Kong stock market, there were very few such extreme dividends.

In order to save time, Justin Kyle simply set the same day for the general meetings of the shareholders of the five listed companies, after a notice period of 15 days.

On January 23, 1985, the general meetings of the shareholders of the five companies, including United Dockyards and Real Estate Trust, were all held in the morning.

Justin Keel, on a whim, could not stay in Wheelock Shipping Company and chose to attend the shareholders' meeting of the Real Estate Investment Trust on behalf of Wheelock Shipping Company.

The reason for coming to this company was that the Real Estate Investment Trust had the highest net profit last year, reaching 269 million Hong Kong dollars, and once the dividend plan was passed, then he would be able to receive a dividend of over 100 million Hong Kong dollars.

As the protagonist, he should have the bearing of a protagonist, so Justin Kyle was the last to arrive.

When he arrived at the door of the venue, he deliberately stopped and asked the beautiful employee in charge of registration, 'What is the attendance rate for this shareholders' meeting?'

The beautiful employee immediately reported respectfully, 'Chairman, including the shares held by the parent company, the current shareholder attendance rate has reached 84.51%, which is the highest attendance rate for all shareholders' meetings in the past 20 years.'

At this point, Merck Hitachi, the CEO of the real estate trust company who had accompanied Justin Kyle, flattered him: 'Chairman, it must be that the dividend plan this time has really surprised the shareholders, so they have come to the shareholders' meeting very proactively this time to witness this historic moment.'

Justin Kyle had set the general direction of the dividend plan, so Merck Hitachi's flattery hit the mark.

Justin Kyle laughed: 'Maybe that's really possible.'

'Ha ha...'

'Let's go in,'

said Justin Keller, walking into the meeting room with a spring in his step.

What he didn't notice was that as he entered, the representatives of some major shareholders, who had been sitting quietly in the meeting room, looked at each other and smiled for no apparent reason.

The AGM began with a recap of the published financial report, and then moved directly to the consideration of the proposals.

After the representatives of the shareholders who would participate in the vote counting and supervision were determined, the formal roll call vote began.

Soon it was time for the final vote counting.

Justin Kyle sat in his seat with a smile on his face, watching the counting representatives begin the vote count.

It was only less than a minute into the vote count, and Justin Kyle's smile had completely disappeared, his brow furrowed, his breathing a little erratic, as he asked Merk Hitli next to him, 'What's going on? Why are all the votes against?'

On the counting board, the proportion of opposing votes had already reached 7.24%, but the number of votes in favour was still 0%.

Of course, this must be because the votes of the largest shareholder, Wheelock Shipping, have not yet been counted.

But that's not the point. The point is that Justin Kyle had expected the dividend proposal to be passed with at least 90% approval, if not unanimously!

But with three shareholders voting against it, this is definitely not normal!

'Chairman, I'm not sure what's going on either. I'll go and find out,'

After saying this, Merk Hitli nervously got up and walked towards the shareholders who had just counted the votes.

Justin Kyle clenched his fists. When he saw that another shareholder with a 4.47% stake had voted against the motion, and the number of votes against the motion suddenly jumped to 11.71%, his heart sank. He subconsciously looked in the direction of Merk Hitli.

He saw Merck Hitachi say a few words to a shareholder, and then his face changed, while the shareholder still showed a sneer.

Then Merck Hitachi approached other shareholders, and although the attitude of the other shareholders was mixed, the face of Merck Hitachi grew uglier with each question.

Soon, Merk Hitli hurried back.

As soon as he sat down, Justin Kyle hurriedly asked, 'Why did they vote against it?'

Merk Hitli lowered his head and told the situation: 'Chairman, their attitude was very clear, and the reason was very perfunctory. They believed that taking out all the profits as dividends would be hugely detrimental to the long-term development of the company, so they did not agree with the dividend, and the profits should continue to be invested in the development of the company.'

'Are they idiots!'

Justin Kyle was furious when he heard this reason, and he shouted angrily, attracting the attention of several shareholders nearby.

Justin Kyle didn't care about that, because he saw that although the number of votes in favour had already exceeded the number of votes against, it had only reached 1.24%.

However, the number of votes against had reached 22.79%!

This figure was extremely glaring!

Merk Hitli hurriedly said, 'Chairman, I think someone must be behind this, I just don't know who it is yet.'

Justin Kyle was not stupid and had guessed as much.

But what was the point of guessing?

Now that everyone had voted and the votes were being counted, there was nothing more that could be done. All that could be done was to pray that the yes votes would make up more than half of the total.

But Justin Kyle himself did not have much faith.

Next, the votes from Wheelock Shipping were finally counted, and the yes votes jumped to 39.44%, taking the lead.

Unfortunately, this lead did not last long.

The 'yes' votes remained at 39.44% until the end.

The 'no' votes, on the other hand, reached 45.07%!

Dividing the total number of votes again gives a 'yes' rate of 46.67% and a 'no' rate of 53.33%.

The motion was not passed as the 'yes' votes did not exceed half of the total!

Upon seeing the result, Justin Kell left the meeting venue with a long face.

And not long after he rushed back to the company, he learned a series of bad news.

The dividend proposals of the four companies, namely United Dockyards, Lane Crawford Retail, Xiangjiang Undersea Tunnel and Federal Realty, were all rejected!

Even Federal Realty, which had the highest shareholding ratio, Wheelock Shipping had a shareholding ratio of 44.5%.

However, the attendance rate at this shareholders' meeting was an extremely rare 90.21%.

Apart from the major shareholder Wheelock Shipping, which voted in favour, all other shareholders voted against, resulting in a favourable rate of only 49.30%, and the vote was unfortunately defeated.

Justin Kyle was so angry that he wanted to spit blood, this was definitely an insult!

The first enemy to come to mind was Differ Securities, and then the Jiuding consortium behind it.

Then came regret, extreme regret.

He regretted being overconfident and holding the general meetings of the five companies on the same day, which had completely undermined his ability to salvage the situation.

Unfortunately, there was no use in regretting, as the general meetings had already been held.

All he could do was immediately gather people to discuss countermeasures. The enemy had gone to great lengths to start with these five companies, and the ultimate target would definitely be Wheelock Shipping Company.

As the general meetings of the five companies ended, the news naturally spread.

It was too shocking!

There was an uproar in the Hong Kong capital market, and Wheelock Shipping's stock price began to plummet.

From the extremely rare situation of the general meetings of shareholders of these five companies, many people knew that Wheelock Shipping's troubles had only just begun!