Equitable Life's Irish with-profit policyholders will be entitled to attend and vote at the mutual's extraordinary general meeting in the UK early next year, the general manager for the Republic stated yesterday.
Mr Noel Creedon rejected concerns that some 20,000 Irish policyholders could be excluded from the meeting which will decide the operation's future. At the meeting members will vote on the demutualistation and sale of Equitable.
Equitable Life was forced to reassess its mutual status following the recent ruling in the House of Lords on guaranteed annuity rates. The ruling that Equitable was not entitled to give different levels of final bonus to policyholders who have guaranteed annuity rate policies left the life assurer with estimated liabilities of £1.5 billion sterling (€2.44 billion). Mr Creedon was responding to queries raised by a policyholder who contacted The Irish Times after examining Equitable's articles of association or rules. He was concerned that Irish policyholders, or members, would be unable to gain admittance to the meeting to vote because they would not be notified of the meeting.
Equitable's articles of association state that members who have an address within the UK will be notified of general meetings. The articles state that "No other person shall be entitled to receive notices of General Meetings".
Mr Creedon insisted yesterday that Irish with-profit policy holders would be treated as members in exactly the same way as members resident in the UK. "Our articles of association were framed at a time when we did not have international operations and under UK legislation a UK parent company is only obliged to issue annual reports to UK residents. But we have always sent the same information to all out members. "And in this case all our members, wherever they are resident, will receive notice of the extraordinary general meeting," he said. "Our Irish policyholders have already received correspondence about the situation in which we referred to the e.g.m.. They will get further correspondence when a date is set for the meeting," he said.
Accepting that the articles may have caused some confusion, he assured Irish policyholders that they would receive notices of the meeting and would be entitled to attend it. And he said members unable to attend the meeting could vote by post.
Mr Creedon said Equitable had received 15 expressions of interest from possible buyers since its sent out its memorandum of sale in recent weeks. The board expected to be in a position to announce its preferred option by the end of the year and members would vote on the issue early next year, he said.
