The following is a statement from the Board of Bromsgrove Sporting Football Club regarding The Bromsgrove Sporting Supporters’ Association (BSSS) Annual General meeting (AGM), held in the Rouslers Bar on Thursday 3rd March 2022
The BSSS recently held their AGM and, of course, several club directors are members of the BSSS and attended this meeting. In fact, one of our directors was one the founders of the original Bromsgrove Rovers Supporters’ Association just over 20 years ago.
The BSSS will be making their own statement to members in due course but for fans who are not members, we are happy to share with you one of the items from that AGM.
The BSSS stated that they have now received revised legal advice and can confirm that Bromsgrove Sporting’s Articles of Association (AoA) drawn up in 2010, DO in fact only allow 1 vote per shareholder and NOT one vote per share that the Society have been consistently stating to be the case for the last two years.
This of course means that the suggested revisions to the AoA would not diminish the voting rights of the BSSS but actually INCREASE them!
The current one vote per shareholder means that each shareholder has around 2% of the voting rights. The new proposals would mean every shareholder having one vote per share up to a maximum of 10% of the total number of shares that have been issued.
The BSSS have more than enough shares to have 10% of voting rights, an obvious improvement on the current situation and that we would need to sell several thousand more shares before the BSSS voting rights would be in danger of going below 10%. However, with every share sold all existing shareholders’ voting percentage would go down.
It is unfortunate that this situation was at stalemate for so long and that some fans were led to believe the Club was trying to diminish the influence of the BSSS or indeed was “anti-fan”.
The Club and the BSSS can now work together for the future of Bromsgrove Sporting in agreement that the AoA do need updating to be fair to larger shareholders and encourage new investors but remembering the lessons from Bromsgrove Rovers and to ensure that no single group or individual shall have control of the club.
Bear in mind that the Bromsgrove Sporting board (including the BSSS representatives) cannot change the AoA, cannot take power away or gift more power to anyone but only put forward proposals and those proposals need to be the best for the Club as a whole and not in favour of any groups or individuals.
It is up to the shareholders to decide if that it is the case and it is the shareholders alone who can vote for or against any changes to the AoA.
