El Corte Inglés shareholders ejected from its board an investor that opposes the sale of a stake in the Spanish department store chain to a Qatari sheikh.
The company’s annual general meeting voted today in Madrid to remove Corporacion Ceslar from the board, El Corte Inglés said in an e-mailed statement. The meeting also named Shahzad Shahbaz to the board, representing Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al Thani.
Sheikh Hamad will take a 10 per cent stake in El Corte Inglés for €1 billion ($1.12 billion), the company said last month. The announcement led Ceslar, which owns about 10 per cent of El Corte Ingles, to pledge to fight the sale on the grounds that it’s unfavourable to shareholders.
The decision to eject Ceslar was proposed by the rest of the board and some other shareholders at the event though it wasn’t on the meeting’s formal agenda, the company said. A spokesperson for Ceslar said by phone it would fight the decision through the courts.
El Corte Inglés operates 88 department stores, of which 86 are in Spain and two in Portugal, and 43 Hipercor large supermarkets, according to its 2013 annual report.
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