Shareholders in Amigo Holdings (AMGO), the parent company of Amigo Loans, have rejected founder James Benamor’s attempt to regain control of the struggling group.
At a general meeting on Wednesday, investors voted against resolutions put forward by Mr Benamor to remove the entire board and replace them with two external directors. Richmond Group, the firm through which the founder holds his majority stake in Amigo, had agreed to abstain from the ballot after being threatened with legal action by the existing board.
On Twitter, Mr Benamor said he wished shareholders the best. “They believe in the board’s vision, not mine,” he said. “It’s not the first time I’ve thought investors were wrong about something, but it is the most painful. Amigo will move forward with shareholders and a board that are united.”
The founder, who stepped down from running the company ahead of its 2018 initial public offering, has said he would liquidate his entire 60.7 per cent holding if other investors did not unite around his plans and throw out a board which had overseen a disastrous run.
“I will today put all of our Amigo shares into the hands of a broker, with non-cancellable sell instructions to sell 1 per cent of Amigo every trading day, starting the day after the vote, if the vote does not remove the current board in its entirety,” he wrote in a blogpost on 3 June.
Bracing themselves for a wave of selling pressure, investors sent the shares down on the news of the vote to 12.3p per share, marking a decline of 96 per cent since Amigo’s listing less than two years ago.
