Regulated Information
To the shareholders:
LONDON - June 1, 2015 at 18:00 hours
The board of directors of the Company ("Board") wishes to inform shareholders that a copy of the annual report and accounts of the Company for the financial year ended 31 December 2014 will be dispatched to all shareholders entitled to receive the same (that is, shareholders registered in the register of members of the Company maintained on behalf of the Company by Capita Registrars ("Shareholders")) before the end of June, 2015.
At that same time a circular and proxy form will be sent to all such Shareholders and placed on the Company website. The circular will contain notice of the annual general meeting of the Company ("AGM") and an explanatory note regarding the resolutions to be voted upon.
Shareholders are entitled to a minimum of 21 clear days’ notice of the AGM. As the notice will be posted before the end of June, the AGM will be held no later than the fourth week of July, 2015.
As a result of the above, the publication of the annual accounts and the AGM will take place at a later time than is required and intended by the Board, which the Board wishes to explain.
As reported in the Statement & Answers for the Consultation Meeting held on 26 January, 2015 ("Statement") and published on the website, the Board and the Company's auditors have been and are faced with serious difficulties caused by the incomplete administrative affairs of the Company which your current Board inherited after the former directors of the Company left office last year. These difficulties are particularly acute concerning the investments made by the Company and its subsidiaries. As reported on pages 9 and 10 of the Statement, the Company had directly and indirectly invested approximately EUR 12 million in the German listed start-up company Your Drinks AG. The funds were invested through subordinated loans and royalty agreements, with no form of security established to safeguard repayment. These investments accordingly carry significant risk for the Company and its subsidiary. These investments are the Company’s most substantial asset.
In order for the accounts of the Company to be prepared and audited to the appropriate standard, access is required to appropriate financial information regarding Your Drinks and the projects and companies on which Your Drinks is dependent, both as at 31 December 2014 and today. There remains, however, inadequate financial information available to the Board. The Board has engaged an independent third party to assess the value of the Company’s interests in Your Drinks. This party, however, faces these same limitations. Your Drinks has not published its 2014 annual accounts, nor is it clear when Your Drinks will do so or when its annual meeting will be held. Last year’s annual meeting for Your Drinks was held at the start of June, 2014. Questions put by the Board to the directors of Your Drinks both in correspondence and in a meeting have remained largely unanswered, and Your Drinks has cited its public listing in Germany as a reason for its inability or unwillingness to provide the information sought of it by the Board. The Board had received the same answer from the supervisory directors of Your Drinks.
Very little and insufficient information is available through public sources. The loan and investment agreements themselves contain insufficient information rights to require Your Drinks to provide to the Company the information that the Board requires and not all information requirements have been met. As stated on page 10 of the Statement, the Board has found no risk analysis or financial documentation in its administration relating to the investment in Your Drinks that was undertaken on the authority of the former directors of the Company, nor were the former directors of the Company willing or able to provide such information. The Board has little visibility as to how Your Drinks is being operated and its prospects, growth potential and chances of recovery.
Other information necessary for the Company's accounts, such as the financials for the former subsidiary Fleischhauer in the first half of 2014, have also not been provided to the Company, despite its many requests for them. Furthermore, claims have been submitted by third parties, for which no basis can be found in the Company's administration.
The shareholders have made known to the Board through the consultation meeting that we held in January, 2015 that their interests lie in obtaining information regarding the next interim dividend payments and the recommencing of trade in the Company shares. The Board believes it will be able to obtain and evaluate additional information, which is likely to shed more light on the value of the investments made and enable certain essential information to be obtained relevant to the preparation of the accounts of the Company. By delaying the date of the AGM, the Board believes this would enable the Board to fulfil its objective of filing and publishing annual accounts.
Board of Directors
Mr. P. Zwart (CEO)
Mr. W. Bouma
Mr. A. van Raak