As previously announced, an Extraordinary General Meeting of AFCW PLC will take place on 29 June.
Because of current restrictions on public meetings, the EGM is not open to shareholders to attend. However, we had provided shareholders with the opportunity to ask questions ahead of the meeting, with a deadline of 22 June. One such question was received, and this is answered further below. You can also see the FAQs that were published on 3 June.
Shareholders who wish to cast a vote can download a proxy form and submit it to reach the address indicated on the form (NB not Kingsmeadow) by 12:00pm on 26 June.
The question we received was as follows:
“Back in 2003 I bought 5,000 shares at a cost of £3,000 to help fund the purchase of Kingsmeadow, and to show my support and solidarity, as any decent true football fan should against the disgusting franchising that took place.
“Since then, things have now moved on. Kingsmeadow is sold, and AFCW will be moving to a lovely new stadium, having now established themselves in the league. However things have taken a turn for the worse for my own team, Yeovil Town, who are now in a perilous position
“I'm sure that you understand that not everyone who supported you back in 2003 were Wimbledon fans, but just football fans prepared to help another club in difficulty. My primary interest is the wellbeing of Yeovil town.
“It is for this reason that you would understand my request to be able to recover my investment, and be able to get as much funding put towards the Yeovil Town fans trust, so that in time , we will be able to control the destiny of our own club, just like you are.
“Please can you tell me how I can now recover this money and put it towards being able to try and save my own club. I'm sure that you agree that having helped you through your time of difficulty , the situation has now reversed and this money is now urgently needed to save my own club.
“I am not a Wimbledon fan, so you can see that having this investment tied up in a now prospering club like yourselves deprives me of being able to halp save my own club.
“I hope that you will be able to tell me how I can recover my investment.”
We have replied to the shareholder who sent in the above question with the following answer:
“Thank you for your enquiry. We’re very grateful to fans around the country for having supported AFC Wimbledon in our hour of need – both back in 2003, when we issued shares to buy our last stadium, and last year, when we issued further shares to help fund our new stadium. Your personal contribution was indeed most generous.
“I’m sorry to hear Yeovil Town are in cash flow difficulties. We too are feeling the pinch in the current environment, and are working on a debenture scheme to help fill the void.
“I’m afraid that we aren’t able to return shareholders’ capital to them. Share capital is permanent capital, and we have just gone to enormous lengths to replenish that capital. If we started to do that for one shareholder, we would potentially have to do the same for other shareholders too.
“I see that Yeovil Town has a crowd funding campaign. In publishing this response to your enquiry, I am bringing this to the attention of our fans and shareholders who may wish to chip in to help Yeovil Town FC. Good luck next season!”