Activist investor Edward Bramson said he won’t be giving up in his battle against Barclays despite losing his bid for a seat on the board of the UK lender.
Bramson made an appearance at the Barclays annual shareholder meeting in London on Thursday morning, conceding early defeat over his resolution to become a director of the bank: “Before we start, I think it’s fair to tell you that we know we haven’t got a majority of the vote.”
Instead, Bramson said he expects a “fairly heavy vote against” his resolution. “We’ve known it for a couple of weeks.”
The New York-based investor, who owns a 5.5% stake in Barclays, wouldn’t give any clues as to what his next steps might be if he indeed loses by a large majority on Thursday.
“If you talk to Barclays nothing happens, I can tell you that from personal experience. If we were so inclined we’d have to do something other than talk. What that is, I think, would be premature to say.”
The activist stressed that his investment vehicle, Sherborne, isn’t solely focused on scaling back the investment bank. Instead, he said, it’s about overall share price, which has fallen from 260p to about 160p over the past three years.
Bramson, a British-born lawyer, has built up a stake in Barclays through his Sherborne Investors vehicle, making him the third-largest shareholder after the investment fund BlackRock and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.
The activist investor was acknowledged in the opening speech of outgoing Barclays chairman John McFarlane, who reiterated that the board doesn’t support Bramson’s appointment “particularly as we have just recovered from a turbulent past”. McFarlanesaid they remain “engaged with Bramson” and treated his concerns “very seriously”.
McFarlane’s departure paves the way for incoming chair, Rothschild’s Nigel Higgins.
Bramson said he had first-hand experience showing that dialogue alone hasn’t delivered results with Barclays but even since putting forward his resolution to be installed on the bank’s board, changes have taken place.
“We’ve been talking to Barclays for about a year and nothing happened. But in the last six weeks after we called the vote, there’s been quite a lot of change and we think it’s positive in the sense that it’s finally a public recognition that the strategy isn’t working and things need to be done.
“So if Higgins wants to take a shot at him himself that’s fine with us. The only thing we’d say is having been given a chance to do that we’re expecting to see results.”
Bramson said his own efforts have been successful in raising the issue of falling share prices and poor returns for investors.
“[Investors] told us the points we’re making are valid and important, but they’ve had a personal appeal from the new chairperson saying that he thinks that he should get an opportunity to fix the thing – if you like – himself, without our assistance.”
Bramson said he didn’t agree with their take but conceded that it’s a “fair position”.
He added: “We think it’s fair to give the new person an opportunity, and we did talk to him about that and, based on the risks that we see, we thought it was better to proceed.”
