In recent months ShareSoc began the process of transformation to appeal to a wider circle of investors and stakeholders and to accelerate our growth. This revealed fundamental differences of opinion within the board about ShareSoc’s purpose and governance, and in particular its role as a campaigning organisation. As a result of those differences several ShareSoc board members have chosen to step down.
The Board thanks Sheryl Cuisia, Karin Schulte, Chris Spencer-Phillips for their service and support and wishes them well in their future endeavours.
Ray Williams has rejoined the Board as SIGnet Director. Danny Wallace has resigned from the Board but will continue as the SIGnet Lead Group Co-ordinator and continue to work closely with ShareSoc’s staff and directors in that role.
During Sheryl’s tenure as chair, we established the foundations for ShareSoc’s future development. The board intends to build on those foundations better to fulfil our goal of supporting individual investors via events, webinars, newsletters, comment and educational resources, while empowering individual investors through lobbying and campaigning on their behalf.
So who is the new Chairperson?
The board has decided that the Chair role will rotate until a new Chair is appointed.
As a very sleeping Sharesoc member I have to say I was unaware that there had been these policy differences, although perhaps if I had read the papers for the last AGM I would have been.
I will try and pay more attention to the notice of the next AGM and if there is a contested election for Chair it would be good to get some sort of statement about their views of taking the organization forward but will try and organize myself to read the Chair’s statement.
As a full member I’m shocked to read this. It would appear there has been a significant difference of opinion between board members, so much so that a significant number of Board members have resigned.
I would like to ask who the new Chair is? or has the rotating Chair not been appointed yet? how soon will a new Chair be appointed.
I believe it would be helpful for a follow-up statement to be made to clarify the reasons for the split in the Board. In particular a greater understanding of the following:
1. What are the concerns over governance? are they resolved?
2. What were the differences of opinion on campaigning? It is not clear whether the new Board wish to do more or less campaigning or a different type of campaigning, only that a difference of opinion existed.
We will appoint a new chair in due course. In the interim, the role of board chair rotates between the current directors at each board meeting.
We will present our proposed strategy at our forthcoming AGM when members will, of course, be able to raise any questions or concerns that they may have. The AGM will be online, as last year, to make it convenient for as many members as possible to attend.