WHITBREAD PLC (WTB)

WHITBREAD PLC (WTB)

Blog posts

It’s Getting More Difficult to Vote

It’s certainly getting more difficult to vote of late, and I am not talking about voting at General Elections but just for resolutions at the General Meetings of companies we own. This seems to be a particular problem with Capita Registrars. Here’s some examples: Whitbread: As a personal crest member, I am on the register and expect to be sent an annual report and proxy voting form (and at least the latter on paper). But no longer it seems. Whitbread ...

Whitbread AGM Report – More Fun Than Lloyds?

The Whitbread Annual General Meeting took place at Church House Conference Centre in Westminster on the 21st June. This was one of the few FTSE-100 AGMs I have attended where the Chairman seemed to pay good attention to the views of private shareholders rather than considering it a tedious 2 hours that had to be suffered. In addition shareholders (and I am a new one) could learn a great deal about the strategy of the company and its affairs from the meeting. ...

Company Results – Alliance Trust, LSE and Whitbread

This morning Alliance Trust announced their results for the year ending December 2015. This company has been the subject of a campaign by ShareSoc (see https://www.sharesoc.org/alliance.html ) and Elliott Advisors were also aggressive in demanding changes before Alliance's last Annual General Meeting but then committed to a truce for one year. Subsequently the Chairman Karin Forseke and Chief Executive Katherine Garrett-Cox have departed and the board has otherwise been restructured. This followed some years of underperformance which resulted in a wide ...

AGM Reports

Whitbread (WTB) AGM 2017

Yesterday I attended the Annual General Meeting of Whitbread Plc (WTB). This was at the Church House Conference Centre at 2.00 pm (a good time and venue – although I did have to get through the security cordon around the Houses of Parliament for the Queen’s “opening” and speech and the threatened leftist/anarchist demo which proved to be a damp squib. Whitbread is celebrating 275 years in business this year. Founded by brewer Samuel Whitbread it now only brews coffee. It’s main ...

Whitbread (WTB) AGM Report 2016 – More Fun Than Lloyds?

The Whitbread Annual General Meeting took place at Church House Conference Centre in Westminster on the 22nd June. This is a good venue although some objected to the 2.0 pm start time, but others liked it. There were about 100 shareholders present. As the Chairman said, a later start time does enable people to travel from some distance. Some background first: Whitbread now has three main business strands: Premier Inn budget hotels, restaurants (Beefeater, Brewers Fayre, etc), and the Costa coffee shops. ...