With eight other institutional shareholders, representing more than 1% of the capital of Orange, the PhiTrust Active Investors governance activism fund had included on the agenda of the General Meeting on 27 May 2015 a resolution calling Orange maintaining a simple voting right in the articles of association.
This remarkable investor mobilization got the unseen score of 43.3% as opposed to the double voting rights at theOrange AGM.
An insufficient score but certainly historically exceptional and quite honorable: the power of the French State allied with too well handled employee shareholders ensured control of 30% of the shares and of 44% of votes at the meeting.
Moreover, no less than five special résolutions of financial authorization were rejected: these resolutions may deprive the shareholders of their subscription rights have not reached the necessary two-thirds score, not only averaging 61% : a negligence of Orange teams that should have taken note of the concerns expressed in the 2014 autumn and early 2015 by most of the voting advisory firms.
Let no one say that these pure comfort permissions were needed to finance the group. Let us remind Orange directors as other subservient to irresponsible rulers that Air Liquide, one of the great companies who have refused in 2015 the unhealthy facilities of dthe ouble voting right, has never wished to approve funding authorizations without shareholder subscrition right…
Note also that Anne Lange a director representative for the State received only 78.61% of the votes of shareholders.
So there is at Orange some way to go to reconcile investors interests and a Board complacent to short term politics…
27 May 2015
