After a last match that was something I want and I can’t for the team led by Rubén Baraja (1-1 in Cornellà-El Prat), with Valencia at the bottom of the LaLiga classification table, in direct relegation positions, and with the atmosphere heated for months, the club’s Council experienced a grotesque situation. The 2024 Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders, scheduled for this Thursday, was suspended due to “the impossibility” of starting the meeting due to the pressure, protests and noise generated by the members who attended Mestalla, with the stadium doors open for Shareholders will participate in the event.
Valencia, whose president, Layhoon Chan, found herself unable to redirect the situation when she was going to begin with the opening speech of the session, announced shortly after through social networks that she would go “directly to the voting on the points of the day”. These votes, which were held electronically, took place once the entire board of directors of the club, among whom were various directors such as the entity’s corporate director, Javier Solís, or President Chan herself, had left the stage before the continuous chants against the board in the Mestalla stands, which lasted for more than 10 minutes.
The secretary of the Board of Directors, Germán Cabrera, in his only intervention to try to dispel the criticism, had warned that if the chants did not stop, they would go directly to voting on the points of the day, which made those chants even more intensified. “If we can’t talk, we leave,” he said. And they left.
Chan had tried to speak shortly after, and although he tried to start the Meeting, it was not possible, so the eight members of the board, including councilors and directors, left 12 minutes after 12, when the event began. They headed into the locker room tunnel amidst shouts, insults and boos. And they continued with the Board, but in private. Not in vain, the items on the agenda had to be approved. Among them, there were significant ones, for example: the financial operation with Goldman Sachs (a loan of up to 325 million, with which to refinance the debt and launch the work of the New Mestalla), in addition to the income statement and the budget for the 2024-2025 season, about 99 million. The votes, the club reported shortly after, “will be published on the electronic headquarters.”
After several years, the Board had minority shareholders again on Thursday in the Mestalla rostrum, after the entity eliminated the requirement to own or represent a high number of shares, in the case of the last edition, 5,786 shares, at least to be able to attend the event.
The Board, however, turned out to be unviable due to the amount of reproaches and the impossibility of putting the agenda out in a natural way. In the stands of the stadium: banners with the motto Lim Go Home and chants like those already recurring on match day: “Peter, go now” — the fans continue to sing it no matter how much time has passed since Peter Lim last set foot in Valencia time—or “Layhoon Chan, you liar.” The atmosphere in Mestalla is beginning to be unbreathable and the Board has not been spared.
