NCLT to ZEEL: Hold board meet to take up Invesco EGM request

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Thursday directed Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) to carry a board assembly to contemplate the request of its shareholders, Invesco Developing Markets Fund and OFI Global China, for convening a rare common assembly (EGM) of ZEEL to debate numerous points.
The tribunal’s course got here on a petition filed by Invesco and OFI Global China. The two buyers, who collectively maintain 17.88 per cent in ZEEL, had approached the NCLT for guiding ZEEL to carry its EGM inside the stipulated timeframe to reconstitute the board and take away two board members and Punit Goenka as managing director and CEO of the corporate.
The NCLT bench, led by Bhaskara Pantula Mohan and CB Singh, noticed that the regulation mandates ZEEL to convene an EGM and it isn’t the board’s “discretion”. According to Section 100 of the Companies Act, 2013, listed corporations are imagined to announce a date for an EGM inside three weeks of receiving such a request from an investor holding no less than 10 per cent shares. The NCLT additionally directed ZEEL to speak the board’s selections appropriately to the shareholders. It will subsequent hear the case on October 4.
Invesco has been constant in its demand for an EGM in its earlier letters, dated September 11 and September 23, whereby it had requested ZEEL to stick to its fiduciary duties and statutory obligations and convene an EGM.

Mukul Rohatgi, representing Invesco, advised the tribunal that ZEEL was not being run appropriately and that the brand new administrators must be on the board to make sure the curiosity of the shareholders. Rohatgi additionally reiterated Invesco’s earlier demand of an EGM, regardless of the merger, to take away MD and CEO Goenka, and two different administrators (who’ve already resigned).
ZEEL’s counsel Gopal Subramanium responded by saying that the corporate’s unbiased administrators would maintain a gathering both Thursday night or Friday to take a name on the requisitions by an investor to carry an EGM. “The board of the company is scheduled to meet as per the statutory time allotted, in relation to the matter. The company will continue to take all the actions needed in the interest of the shareholders and as per the law,” a ZEEL spokesperson mentioned.

Invesco (previously Invesco Oppenheimer Developing Markets Fund), together with its subsidiary OFI Global China Fund, had earlier requested ZEEL to convene an EGM to evict sure administrators for alleged breach of company governance norms. Invesco had additionally sought the appointment of its six members on ZEEL’s board.
On ZEEL’s earlier proposed merger with rival Sony Pictures Networks India (SPNI), Invesco’s counsel mentioned it was not in opposition to the deal. However, it was frightened a couple of fall in its stake within the merged firm. —FE