After 39% of shareholders voted against the re-election of chairman Scott Forbes, Rightmove is currently seeing investor protest. Senior independent director Peter Williams' re-election was also opposed by 37.7% of the investors, adding on more cause for complaint. Interestingly, a large number of shareholders also abstained from voting.
The shareholder's main issue is the "over-boarding" of these electors, in which directors take too many managerial roles in other firms and ignore their own company, letting it stall and fall apart in the process.
Forbes has made £170,000 by working for Rightmove in the past year, but he is also the chairman of Innaol Group, a renewable energy firm, and Cars.com, a US car sales company. He is also non-executive director of travel firm Travelport Worldwide. He recently sold 100,000 shares in the company for £4.2m, then sold another £7m worth of shares to buy a house in central London.
Williams was paid £65,000 last year for his role in Rightmove, but was also on the board of Boohoo, Domino’s Pizza’s Turkish franchise DP Eurasia, German optician Mr Spex, and property developer U and I.
A Rightmove spokesperson had this to say after the meeting and subsequent protest. “The board has noted that a significant minority of votes were received against the re-election of our chairman, Scott Forbes, and our senior independent director, Peter Williams. The board ensures that every director is both highly qualified to deliver for the company, and has sufficient time capacity to meet their commitments to Rightmove plc. As part of our ongoing dialogue with shareholders we had been discussing director re-election prior to the vote at the AGM, and will continue to work with shareholders on this matter.”
Rightmove is one of the leading UK property portals, with coverage across the entire country. The company's current strategy involves growing organically and continuing to advertise to as wide a variety of people as possible.
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