The directors of Elan were blocked at the company’s AGM today from selling shares for cash without first offering them to ordinary shareholders pro rata.
The resolution was the only one of a number proposed by management of the troubled company to fail to be carried.
Of the resolutions carried, the most important was the introduction of 7.5 million new share options, the equivalent of 2.1 per cent of the current issued capital.
Elan chairman Dr Garo Armen expected to face the wrath of shareholders at the AGM in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin but it turned out to be a relatively muted affair.
Only near the end of the meeting did individual shareholders criticise management. At one point a shareholder voiced his frustration by comparing the chairman to an archbishop and implored him to listen to his leity.
Dr Armen said there had been a "decision-making paralysis" for senior management both due to internal and external factors.
The ongoing Securities and Exchange Commisssion (SEC) investigation into the company was also a cause for concern but Dr Armen told shareholders, "we haven’t found anything that we would regard as improprieties".
When pushed by individual shareholders to name the duration of the SEC investigation Dr Armen said that "to the best of my knowledge we hope, and it's a hope, that it [the investigation] would be resolved in less than a year".
Elan was once the largest company on the Irish stock market - valued at €22 billion a year ago - but since January shares in the drugmaker plunged by more than 90 per cent leaving it worth around €800 million.
