we cannot go after the regulators until after Penrose because we do not have the facts in our files

Jeremy Lever QC persisted with his request for a reasoned explanation of why the Society did not consider it appropriate to unit link the fund. Subsequently Chief Executive Thomson agreed to prepare a paper on the issues within 6-9 months.

Colin Slater presented the results of our petition seeking change in the Memorandum & Articles of Association to be ratified at an EGM. But that was brushed aside with the false claim that the petition result was "old news", and that the Board would bring forward proposals to next year's AGM because an EGM would cost £1m to stage. (This is not correct - it should cost no more than £¼m). Subsequently in the Q&A posted on Equitable's website the possibility of holding an EGM on the issue was cancelled.

Regrettably Treves, Thomson, and Bellringer continued their policy of generally not answering questions and/or giving misleading or incorrect answers. Thus Alex Henney received either no answer or an incorrect answer to the following questions:-

• please provide in laymen's terms an analysis of the with-profits fund's available assets together with a comparison between the available assets and aggregate policy values, where the latter are differentiated between guaranteed and non-guaranteed elements. No answer
• provide a proper analysis of the fund's performance i.e. return by asset class. No answer

Note that the clear intentions of the FSA in its recently published "Feedback Statement on the With-Profits Review" is that the above information will be required in future.

• report the number of members in the with-profits fund end of year. No answer
• set out clearly the nature and implications of the GIR issue. Treves alleged that information about GIRs was included in the Compromise document. In fact there is no reference to GIRs in the document. Furthermore Treves (or one of the others) made the claim that GIR and non-GIR policyholders were treated equally, which is impossible - one group has a guarantee while the other does not

Treves/Bellringer/Thomson made the following incorrect statements:-

• one of them claimed that the policy of bringing profits forward to share up the reserves was "used industry wide". On 5/6 the FT carried a piece which pointed out that only seven other companies out of 44 used the practice
• Treves blamed the stock market for the further MVA announced on 15 April. In fact in April the FTSE was more or less where it was a year ago (subsequently it has declined)
• Bellringer incorrectly claimed that the reason for the delay in providing the solvency return was due to some story about the FSA providing it to Companies House from where members could request it. In fact under the Financial Services Market Act, via Rule 9.7 of the interim "Prudential Source Book: Insurers" policyholders have a right to receive "deposited documents" once they are deposited. There was thus nothing stopping the Society putting the return on its website the day after it was deposited with the FSA, nor providing it to any policyholder or journalist who asked for it. I subsequently learnt that he tried to fob off a number of professional actuaries who sought the solvency return, and the Association of Consulting Actuaries sent him an e-mail asking him to stop playing games. My informant commented that it was clear that the objective was to keep the return under wraps until after the AGM
• misleading statements were made about the format of the Annual Report & Accounts. Namely it was insinuated that 1) the policy that asset values should be within ­+5% of liabilities, and 2) discussion of the GIR issue could not be mentioned in the Annual Report. In fact the Companies Act prescribes a minimum that has to go in the accounts, but does not prescribe a maximum. Directors can put what they like in the Report and the Notes to the Accounts

Voting for Directors

After many written requests to the scrutineers, and a month after the AGM, EMAG succeeded in obtaining the details of the postal votes, with and without proxies. The Society's company secretary then instructed that there be no further detail provided - this preventing publication of the total vote with proxies identified. Nevertheless, the postal votes were 95% of those cast and the scrutineers write that they are representative. This obstruction, as has so often been manifested, is unfortunately typical of how the Society interprets the policy that "The Board is committed to a policy of openness in its communication with policyholders".

We divide the candidates into the two groups: those who were officially supported by the board and those who were independent. (Note most members have the maximum 10 votes each). The first two columns are the results as reported in the press and include the 640,000 non-mandated¹ proxy votes cast by Treves. The second shows the postal votes results, with the non-mandated votes stripped out.

Treves cast at least 103,000 votes against each of the independent candidates and he also cast between 50,000 and 60,000 proxy votes each for his approved slate, and these votes accounted fore most of the superficially large differences between the official and indepenent candidates. Although the six "official" candidates all polled at least 45,000 more mandated positive votes "for" than the independents, this represents only about 5,000 members.

The figures demonstrate:-

• significant apathy among members - only 11% voted, which is surely a poor turnout after the worst year of the Society's history
• the undemocratic patronage vested in the chairman by the current voting arrangements. Treves cast more than 20% of the 3 million votes cast in the election of directors. The voting ballot paper was unconstitutional in that it made no provision for Abstention, which gave the chairman all default proxies on every vote
• automatic, but limited support for "official" candidates, which does not justify the following claim in the Society's press release of 28 May. "The six Board members standing for re-election have received a strong endorsement from Equitable Life members in the ballot result announced today." None of the other candidates received the net positive vote required to be eligible as a director, the closest being Mr. Howard-Jones who fell 42,000 votes short and trailed all the re-elected directors by at least a further 150,000 votes. The campaign led by one of the other candidates Mr. Paul Braithwaite, urging members to vote against the Society's chairman Mr. Vanni Treves, failed comprehensively as Mr. Treves received the support of 4 of every 5 votes cast?Vanni Treves said: "I thank members for their powerful endorsement of the Board especially after such a difficult year".

We have already observed that the large negative votes were a consequence of the proxies Treves cast, and to claim that receiving 7% of members votes is a "powerful endorsement" is patent nonsense.

• the Society has continued to obfuscate. It is deplorable that one has to fight to drag the proxy voting details out of a mutual. Enlightened mutuals (Nationwide, Standard Life etc) have done away with votes "Against" and proxies, having embraced "first past the post".