First Leisure appoints independent directors to stave off investor revolt

MICHAEL Grade, the former media mogul who now chairs First Leisure, yesterday caved into pressure from large shareholders to reform the antiquated board structure of the bars to bowling group.

First Leisure has been forced to bring forward plans to appoint two new independent non-executive directors to the board to stave off a potential shareholder revolt over a series of controversial measures including Mr Grade's own pounds 4.5m, four-year pay deal.

However, some of First Leisure's largest institutional shareholders remain angry that Mr Grade has ignored their demands for a more far-reaching shake up of the board and believe the plans do not go far enough to placate their growing concerns about the way the group is run.

First Leisure plans to appoint the new non-executive directors within 12 months, to replace two, as yet unspecified, existing non-executive board members. The move is designed to assuage shareholder concerns that the current non-executive directors lack independence.

The concessions were enough to ensure that three non-executive directors including Joe Bollom, David Ducks and Sir John Woolf were re-elected to the board. However, they only narrowly won a poll at the agm, with more than 45 per cent of the shareholders showing their dissatisfaction with First Leisure by voting against them. The three non-executives have attracted specific criticism from institutional shareholders and are candidates to lose their positions when the new directors are appointed.