Institutional shareholders at Zee have been contemplating calling an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to potentially oust MD and CEO Punit Goenka after the merger failed to materialise causing financial and legal problems for ZEEL. Shareholders had also reached out to the Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI) asking for regulatory interventions to talk about the excessive delay in the merger of the two entities i.e Zee and Sony.
The merger fell through after two years of back and forth and due diligence because of the disagreement between the two parties wherein Sony wanted to bar Goenka from holding any executive position in the merged entity while Goenka wished to continue as MD and CEO of the newly formed company.
This is not the first time that there’s been an ousting attempt at Goenka. In 2021, the then minority shareholder Invesco Mutual Fund called for an EGM to oust Goenka to accelerate the merger of Zee with Reliance’s media arm Viacom18.
Zee emerged victorious from the entanglement and Invesco was forced to withdraw. The latter then ended up divesting its shares in Zee.
Coming back to the current situation, while this sets precedent for investors like Nippon and LIC to call for a EGM, Goenka with his meagre 4 percent share has been known to able to sway Zee’s board every now and then.