The Ferrovial shareholders' meeting barely had four shareholder interventions, despite the interest aroused. Two of them were from associations dedicated to representing small investors and another two from individuals. There was criticism of the Government, minor requests and no dissent with the plan to change headquarters to the Netherlands.
One of the participants was Valentín de Torres-Solanot del Pino, who is the cousin of the president, Rafael del Pino, and who usually participates every year in the meeting to defend the management of the company. Yesterday he emphasized "the successes in the management of Ferrovial in its origins and, in particular, in the current stage".
He also offered a particular version of patriotism, in the board's only comment related to this emotion. "It is patriotic to ensure the improvement of the competitiveness of Spanish companies, and also to lay the foundations to maintain the dividend," he said.
Another shareholder, Jesús Neila Fernández, asked that Ferrovial maintain its dividend policy and expressed concern about "the use of Spanish in the future by the company", including the possibility of listening to meetings through simultaneous translation.
"We will maintain a free telephone number for shareholders," the president replied, before informing that future shareholders' meetings will be held in English, although management will try to enable a translation channel. “It has to be in English. The other option was in Dutch, and we thought it was better to go with the first one”, he joked.
The first representative of the minority shareholders to intervene was Jean Pierre Paelinck, president of the World Federation of Investors (WFI). He expressed his "concern over the attacks on Ferrovial for exercising a right enshrined in the Treaty on European Union, which is the freedom of establishment that guarantees the mobility of companies." The “attacks by the Spanish authorities” are “excessive, inappropriate and on the verge of illegality”, he assured.
He also accused the Government of launching specific rules to stop the operation, which also goes against community law.
Another intervention was that of Christian Gülich, vice president of Better Finance, whose speech was also aimed at criticizing the Government. "Decisions have to be made by the shareholders of the companies and never by political instances," he asserted.
“It is important that companies are allowed to compete freely within the EU borders to strengthen that competitiveness,” said Gülich, whose association he said represents five million small European shareholders. He was also "perplexed" by the "interventionism" of the Government.
Del Pino thanked the shareholders for their support for the project and took the opportunity to express his confidence in "Spanish and European legal certainty". More than 52% of the capital is distributed among investors with shares of less than 0.9%. The capital is distributed in 727 million shares and has international investors as the main owners, with close to 90% of the shareholding.
