After being at the helm for nearly two decades, Dish TV promoter Jawahar Goel has been ousted from the board on Friday after a majority of shareholders voted against his reappointment as Managing Director of the company at the EGM on Friday.
Nearly 80 per cent of the shareholders voted against the re-appointment of Jawahar Goel as the Managing Director of the board. Shareholders also rejected the appointment of Rajgopal Chakravarthi as a non-executive independent director of the company.
Tussle with YES Bank
Goel’s ouster was expected after the Bombay High Court refused to prevent Yes Bank from voting in the AGM. The dispute between YES Bank and Goel had been going on for almost a year. YES Bank had been seeking the ouster of the promoter family Essel Group since they owe nearly ₹4,200-crore to the bank which they have been unable to pay for many years.
Goel, who is also the brother of Essel Group patriarch Subhash Chandra, tried to delay the EGM first and then tried legal recourse to stop YES Bank from voting. Since last year, YES Bank has wished to rejig the Dish TV board, seeking the removal of Jawahar Goel along with the board of directors in the promoter camp citing corporate governance issues. YES Bank is the largest shareholder in the company, owning 24.78 per cent of Dish TV’s shares, thus its vote became decisive in swinging the vote in favour of Jawahar Goel’s ouster. In contrast, Dish TV promoters Essel Group owns merely 6 per cent of the company’s shares.
Hard times for Essel Group
Essel Group fell into hard times in 2018 after the promoter entities raised debt worth ₹13,000 crore from several banks to invest in the infrastructure sector. As several of the infrastructure projects stalled, the investments turned bad and banks seized promoters’ pledged shares including in the flagship, Zee Entertainment Enterprises.
As of now, the Chandra family owns only 4 per cent in Zee. Punit Goenka, son of Subhash Chandra as well as the Managing Director and CEO of Zee, has been able to retain control of the company for quite some time. However, with the ongoing merger with Sony in process, Essel is likely to lose control over the merged media entity soon.
Now, with the shareholder’s verdict on the Dish TV issue, Essel Group has lost control over another crucial business.