As per ET NOW, the Bombay High Court has granted an injunction to ZEE in its appeal to not call EGM.
Zee Entertainment Enterprises had said that it will not be able to call an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders as it would be ‘illegal’. Invesco, on the other hand, had said that the ZEE board was bound by the company act to hold the meeting. It said that ZEE was assuming a power which they did not hold.
Appearing for ZEE, senior advocate Gopal Subramanium had argued that the requisition brings illegality since the shareholders have not taken prior approval from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), and it is also in the violations of various rules and guidelines of SEBI, MIB and the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
“They (Invesco) want to remove the MD and CEO of the company and wants to appoint six independent directors on the board of the company and the shareholders are saying the LODR (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) regulations are merely guidelines, which is totally incorrect,” Subramanium had argued.
Following the development, the stock rose 6.47 per cent to hit a high of Rs 325 on BSE.
In another development, ZEE informed the stock exchanges that a meeting of the board of directors of the company, which was scheduled to be held on Wednesday, to consider and approve the unaudited financial results has been cancelled due to lack of quorum.
“The next date of the meeting will be duly informed with fresh notice,” it said.
Earlier, Punit Goenka, managing director and chief executive at Zee Entertainment Enterprises had alleged that Invesco, the largest stakeholder of the company, was “seeking control” of the company’s board and trying to “sabotage” the proposed merger with Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN).
In an affidavit filed in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Friday, a copy of which was accessed by ET, Goenka had pointed out that Invesco’s requisition notice – through Invesco Developing Markets Fund and OFI Global China Fund – to ensure “wholesale changes” to the company’s board, was to “teach” him a “lesson for having rebuffed their proposal”.
Later, Invesco said in a statement that its role was to, “help facilitate that potential transaction and nothing more.”
