Brompton Group has announced:
that the special meeting (the “Meeting”) of holders of Class A Shares and Preferred Shares (the “Shareholders”) of Brompton Lifeco Split Corp. (the “Fund”) scheduled to be held at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday September 26, 2019, has been cancelled. The purpose of the Meeting was to consider and vote upon an extraordinary resolution to implement amendments to update and modernize the investment objectives, investment guidelines and investment restrictions of the Fund (the “Amendments”). The Amendments, as set out in Appendix A of the management information circular dated August 23, 2019, will not be implemented.
At the voting deadline today, a majority of both the Class A Shares and the Preferred Shares were voted in favor of the Amendments. However, the Amendments required a two thirds majority by both Class A Shareholders and Preferred Shareholders, voting separately as individual classes, to approve the Amendments. Approximately 43% of the issued and outstanding Preferred Shares were voted and the two thirds approval threshold was exceeded. Approximately 32% of the issued and outstanding Class A Shares were voted, however, the two thirds approval threshold was not met.
The Fund will continue to operate as it does currently. The Fund invests, on an approximately equally weighted basis, in a portfolio consisting of common shares of Canada’s four largest publicly traded life insurance companies: Great-West Lifeco Inc., iA Financial Group, Manulife Financial Corporation and Sun Life Financial Inc. The Fund provides a low cost, efficient way to gain exposure to Canadian life insurance companies, with the added benefit of a proprietary covered call option strategy employed by the Manager which can lower portfolio volatility along with generating cash flows for distribution to Shareholders.
LCS.PR.A was added to the HIMIPref™ database in October, 2014, backdated to 2014-5-1, following its term extension and treasury offering earlier in the year. Capital Units dividends were suspended in January 2015, but reinstated in November, 2016. Only two of the scheduled monthly Capital Unit distributions has been made since the September, 2018, payment became due. The company announced the five year extension in March, 2018. A mandate change was proposed in August, 2019. The issue reset to 6.25% with an end-date of 2024-4-29 in April, 2019. The issue is tracked by HIMIPref™ but relegated to the Scraps – Splitshares subindex on credit concerns.
In addition, a lot of the dividends paid by the various Split “A” shares are not true dividends but a return of Capital (its right on the web page).
“Dividend” will be paid this month.