Glanbia wins game, set and marquee

The marquee — if that is the right word to describe the massive enclosed structure erected to accommodate the nearly 5,000 shareholders at last Wednesday’s special AGM of the Glanbia group at Gorwan park racecourse in Kilkenny — was by its sheer size and complex engineering a testament to seriousness of the event that it was designed to witness.

It was a cavernous space divided into three separate halls which, irregardless of last Wednesday’s result — a vote in favour of reducing the co-op’s shareholding in the PLC business of Glanbia to under 50% thus, in effect, creating two separate business entities, a co-op and a PLC — will in effect disappear early in 2013 leaving no trace of its existence.

Once you entered, you were immediately in what could pass for the check-in hall at an airport. Terminal type desks ran down the full length of long axis of the building where you tendered your credentials as a shareholder along with in my case my drivers licence for identification. Once tagged with a wrist band, you could proceed further.