Post AGM Private Meeting with Berkeley’s Directors
At the end of the AGM on 9th September 2009 at the Woodlands Park Hotel, Cobham, Surrey, Berkeley Group Chairman, Victoria Mitchell, kindly arranged for 5 of her Directors to meet with the Berkeley Homes Collective in a private conference room.
The meeting lasted just over 1 hour.
At the beginning of the meeting Berkeley’s favourite phrase was muttered by all in the Berkeley camp:
“Off the record” (Clearly uncomfortable with having to face reality and talk to their customers, everyone who meets Berkeley hears the same phrase, “this is off the record”).
There were a few new faces and a couple of old ones we already knew, including Directors: Justin Tibaldi and Paul Vallone who are responsible for Caspian Wharf, E3 and Royal Arsenal Riverside, SE18 respectively.
Justin Tibaldi didn’t have much to say and just stood there uncomfortably looking at the floor.
Paul Vallone was his usual arrogant self and gave us the same tired old lecture -
- a contract is a contract
(What about your Section 106 agreements to build Royal Arsenal’s Crossrail station? Why are you trying to bail out of that one if a contract is a contract?)
- they were not suing anybody and are not going to bankrupt anyone (FALSE – see below)
- the reason they won’t negotiate is because buyers haven’t given them “full financial disclosure” (FALSE – see below)
We did point out that:
1. Berkeley won’t define what full financial disclosure is
2. Berkeley won’t tell us what they want the information for and if they’ll propose a solution once they have this information. It looks to us like a fishing exercise to see who is worth taking to the cleaners.
3. Numerous buyers have offered full disclosure and in lieu of any detailed request from Berkeley, have proactively offered sight of mortgage statements, pay slips etc. to prove they can still get a mortgage, but can’t complete at the original purchase price due to the collapse in valuations.
The result is the same “Go away and find the money, otherwise we’ll go legal”
Its a pointless exercise with no benefit for the buyer. Purely an intrusive and humiliating exercise to help Berkeley assess how much they can extract from each individual who can’t complete.
4. Mr Tibaldi was forced to confirm that several buyers have given full financial disclosure and that they had still nonetheless been sent pre-action protocol letters (the step before full High Court claims are issued). While looking at the floor, he confirmed to Mr Vallone that it had “gone legal”. Oooops. Mr Vallone clearly didn’t have a clue what the other half was doing.
Glad to see Berkeley’s Directors communicate with one another just as well as they communicate with their customers.
Berkeley Group AGM
The Berkeley Homes Collective today sent a group of representatives to the Berkeley Group AGM in Cobham, Surrey at the Woodland Park Hotel, Cobham.
The group was asked to wait in the reception area of the hotel before Chairman, Victoria Mitchell invited us to join other delegates for coffee before the meeting.
Mrs Mitchell was very polite and cordial to the group (unlike other members of the board), although she did mention that they’d heard we were coming…..
Well that’ll explain the 6 big bouncers who were manning the doors.
However, all credit to them, the bouncers were also very polite and very helpful to the group. We took the liberty of leaving some flyers in the reception area of the Woodlands Park Hotel in Cobham so that other delegates, shareholders, investors and hotel guests could read the truth about what Berkeley Group are doing to their customers. Again, both security and staff were very accomodating.
We did not attend the AGM with the view to disrupting it, but rather to highlight the issues facing Berkeley’s customers and that fact the Board have been in denial for the past year that prices were falling and continuing to fall and that this was causing major issues for purchasers completing on their homes due to mortgage valuatiuons being reduced by up to 40%.
As our representatives swapped suit jackets for Berkeley Homes Collective t-shirts a few minutes into the proceedings, we did notice a lot of surprised faces and a few angry looks from the Board. Mrs Mitchell mixed up her words at this point, clearly un-nerved by our presence.
There are some things you just can’t sweep under the carpet, not even in a remote country house hotel on AGM day! We’re one of them.
We also wanted to highlight the fact that while most in the room were toasting another set of wonderful figures (despite a fall in sales), there was a ticking timebomb awaiting because someone had forgotten to mention in the annual report and accounts that a whole load of off-plan sales were turning sour and buyers forced into default because Berkeley won’t negotiate and won’t help these buyers caught in the mortgage-valuation trap. Mr Pidgley’s preferred approach was to issue pre-action protocol letters, via cheapo legal firm (read: ” ambulance chasers”) Davenport Lyons, to those who can’t complete (note: “can’t” is very different from “won’t” complete!).
At the end of the meeting, having been denied the opportunity to question the Board, one of our representatives was forced to stand up and question them anyway. As predicted they didn’t want to talk about our cases and the fact they are busy trying bankrupt dozens of innocent home-buyers. Most of the Board made a sharp exit, Mr Pidgley was ushered out by his PR men, although he did decide to come back and shout at us. Mrs Mitchell then intervened and kindly rounded up her boys for a private meeting with us in a near-by conference room.
As shareholders of Berkeley Group, you’ll be seeing a lot more of us.
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