Shares of listed property developer Winton Land have been suspended by NZX’s market regulator after the company fell short of the exchange’s governance requirements.<\/p>\n
NZ RegCo said Winton no longer met the minimum requirements for the number of independent directors on its board, and for the make-up of its audit committee.<\/p>\n
The suspension follows last week’s resignations of chairman Steven Joyce and independent director Guy Fergusson, who said they had a “fundamental misalignment of expectations” with the company’s majority shareholder over corporate governance.<\/p>\n
Fergusson also chaired Winton’s audit and financial risk committee. His departure leaves Winton with only one independent director, Glen Tupuhiri.<\/p>\n
A third director, Julian Cook, announced his resignation on Friday. James Kemp, who represents 22 percent shareholder Macquarie, resigned as chair of the remuneration committee but remains on the board.<\/p>\n
The company also said its long-serving chief financial officer, Jean McMahon, had resigned last week.<\/p>\n
Winton’s shares had fallen 6 percent before being suspended and are nearly 24 percent lower over the past week.<\/p>\n
Winton develops and sells residential land, house-and-land packages, townhouses and apartments, and also has retirement village and commercial property interests. Its projects include large master-planned communities in New Zealand and Australia.<\/p>\n
The company’s last traded price before the suspension was $1.05, giving it a market value of about $311 million. Its shares are down about 49 percent over the past year.<\/p>\n
Winton paid its most recent dividend, an interim dividend of 0.55 cents a share, in March 2024, and has not paid one since.<\/p>\n
For the year ended June, Winton reported revenue of $188.8 million, EBITDA of $45.6 million and net profit after tax of $22.7 million.<\/p>\n
Winton is majority-owned by interests associated with founder Chris Meehan, who stepped aside as chair and chief executive in July and was replaced by Joyce.<\/p>\n
The former politician lasted barely seven weeks in the role.<\/p>\n
With Joyce and Fergusson finishing today, Winton’s sole independent director is Tupuhiri. The other directors are Chris Meehan, Michaela Meehan and James Kemp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shares of listed property developer Winton Land have been suspended by NZX’s market regulator after the company fell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-585564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}