AORTECH International has come under fire from its small shareholders after the fallen Scottish biotech star bowed
to pressure from its biggest investor, Isis Asset Management, and switched the venue of its annual meeting from Lanarkshire to London.
The Bellshill-based firm had booked a meeting room at the Hilton Strathclyde - the venue of AorTech's tumultuous AGM last year - but then cancelled the booking and notified shareholders the meeting would be held at offices of public relat-ions firm Buchanan Commun-ications in London.
AorTech, which was forced to reinvent itself from a maker of heart valves into an intellect-ual property and biomaterials company, is 30%-owned by Isis, with a further 9% controlled by Swedish value investor Peter Gyllenhammar.
However, Jim McMillan, an AorTech small shareholder from Dunbartonshire, yesterday said: ''For a company like AorTech, whose shareholder base is almost entirely Scottish, it's completely outrageous to hold their AGM in London.''
McMillan, who described his stake in AorTech as a ''significant private holding'', added: ''They obviously have no good news to report. And apart from the fact that a lot of the small shareholders probably can't afford to fly to London, it's clearly an attempt to avoid serious debate on the com-pany, and probably a move to avoid a repeat of last year's meeting.''
Furious shareholders last year voted on a show of hands to oust the chairman and chief executive at the embattled former technology darling, but the pair survived on proxy votes.
Moreover, a steady stream of investors at the last annual meeting lambasted those at the helm of the company, which has seen its share price plummet from more than 1000p four years ago.
However, Ian Cameron, AorTech's finance director,
denied the London venue was an attempt to bury bad news. He said: ''We're involved in a number of positive discussions at the moment.
''The simple truth is that it was Isis who put in the request. We didn't suggest it ourselves, and I do understand the concerns of the smaller shareholder, but when our biggest stakeholder makes a request, we have to take notice.''
Gordon Wright, one of AorTech's founders and a former chairman who still owns a 12% stake, said: ''There are a lot of good, loyal shareholders in Scotland who will want to hear what's happening to their company, but will now be very
disappointed, as I am. ''This change of venue is
just a way to avoid another embarrassing situation.''
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