Good morning!
April Fool's Day today, and my favourite article is this corker from the Guardian, which had me in stitches once I realised it was not serious, about half way through.
Best Tweet of the day (well from last night, to be completely accurate) so far comes from the utterly brilliant (get this woman into Parliament) Julia Hartley-Brewer;
Lakehouse (LON:LAKE)
(at the time of writing, I hold a long position in this share)
Slater/Rawlings EGM statement - I was rather hoping that this announcement was also an April Fool, but sadly it appears not. As a LAKE shareholder myself, I'm getting increasingly perplexed and annoyed by the mud-slinging in public going on between the Slater/Rawlings team, and the incumbent management of LAKE.
This is just not the way things should be done. If they think management are no good, then Slater/Rawlings should have called an EGM to replace the executive Directors. Instead they have gone down the bizarre route of wanting to evict the NEDs, and put in Rawlings himself (the founder), and 2 other people they think would be good NEDs.
The company's response was to reject this - mainly on the grounds that the new NEDs would not be independent, which is a fair point. Although I think the company was foolish to then publicly slate the 3 suggested new NEDs, undermining their credentials in this announcement, which seems to have burned their bridges towards a compromise - not a good negotiation stance.
All in all, it's ludicrous situation that needs to be sorted out asap, as the company is just racking up unnecessary costs on numerous consultants, not to mention management time wasted, on this issue.
I can't help feeling that it's a bit of petulance on the part of Slater. They overpaid in a bad IPO, and are now throwing their toys out of the pram. If they're serious about changing management, then they should have just spoken to management, and if not possible to get the changes they want, then call an EGM to unseat the executive Directors, and put in new management. That's the way it should be done. Changing the NEDs but leaving in place the execs that they say have done a bad job, seems daft to me.
Anyway, the current situation is not showing anybody in a good light,…
