Thalassa slams Local Shopping performance, cleans out board

Thalassa announced on Thursday that it exercised its rights as a holder of 23.48% of the issued share capital of the Local Shopping REIT to requisition the convening of a general meeting of LSR on Wednesday, to remove from its board of directors Stephen East and Nicholas Vetch and to appoint to its board Duncan Soukup, Chairman of Thalassa, John Hutchinson and Toby Burgess.

The AIM-traded company’s board noted LSR's announcement on 27 October, in which it stated that "the proposals indicated by Mr Soukup would be highly detrimental to the interests of shareholders in general, would destabilise relationships with critical stakeholders and would be very disruptive of the programme that the board has in hand for executing the strategy approved by shareholders.”

For the reasons set out in the requisition letter, the Thalassa board said it believes that statement to be ill-conceived.

It asserted that, had the liquidation process proceeded in a reasonable time frame, Thalassa would not be involved as the asset liquidation would have been completed and cash distributed to shareholders.

Thalassa also questioned that if the board of LSR suggests, as they have, that a faster liquidation of assets was not possible due to market conditions, why the bonus scheme was favourable to Internos and unfavourable to shareholders.

Additionally, Thalassa said LSR's articles clearly stated that the board should be constituted of a minimum of three directors, however since April 2016, LSR has been operating with only two members.

“The board of Thalassa is of the firm view that the ill-advised comments made on its proposals by the board of LSR, before receipt of our official requisition letter or under any circumstances, is a poor attempt to mask LSR's disastrous performance since inception,” said Thalassa chairman Duncan Soukup.