CGI Glass Lewis advises against Wavish joining Endeavour board
Proxy firm CGI Glass Lewis has advised clients to vote against the election of Bill Wavish to the board of Endeavour Group, despite an aggressive campaign by the company’s biggest shareholder, pubs billionaire Bruce Mathieson snr.
CGI Glass Lewis is the first of the advisory firms to set out its advice ahead of the contentious annual meeting set for October 31, in a blow to the Mathieson family who controls 15 per cent of the hotels and liquor chain owner.
Pubs billionaire Bruce Mathieson owns 15 per cent of Endeavour Group. Arsineh Houspian
According to the report to fund manager clients, it said after reviewing the various arguments of the dissident shareholder group and the board, Endeavour’s performance issues are more likely to be short-term rather than due to long-term mismanagement.
“Overall, we believe the situation here is not so severe that it would necessarily warrant a board shake-up through a proxy fight,” it said.
“We note the board has provided Mr Wavish with an open invitation to participate in the company’s ongoing director search process. To the best of our knowledge, the dissident group has not publicly explained why Mr Wavish has declined to participate.”
Endeavour operates 266 Dan Murphy’s stores, 1435 BWS liquor stores and 354 hotels which house 12,700 poker machines.
The boardroom stoush became public on September 27, with hostilities having escalated as Mr Mathieson stepped up his efforts to have Mr Wavish elected, spending millions on a full-scale advertising campaign to try to convince the 420,000 shareholders that a shake-up is needed.
Mr Wavish is best known for his time as an executive at Woolworths Group working with former CEO Roger Corbett. But CGI Glass Lewis questioned if Mr Wavish has
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