Last checked at 1 Oct 2009 14:42
Fiske Plc ('Fiske' or 'the Company')
Results of AGM
Fiske Plc (the 'Company') announces that at the AGM held today all the resolutions were duly passed.
Speaking at the AGM, Clive Harrison, the Chairman and Chief Executive, said the following:
"I would like to make a few additional comments about last year and to update you on our progress to date.
As my predecessor indicated this time last year, we were expecting the half-year to November 2008 to be pretty miserable and it was, but we hoped the second half to the end of May might look brighter. In fact, as I am sure you will remember, the third quarter of our year, the months of December, January and February, were some of the grimmest months in living memory. They were then followed in March by one of the sharpest and strongest rallies in my memory which is roughly the same as living memory.
I regret we didn't forecast the rally.
Whether in fact March marked the end of the bear market is still in my opinion an open question, but whether that is the case or this is a major rally in a bear market as in 1931, either way we are due a correction. Markets never move in straight lines for long. What we are more sure about is that the worst of the banking crisis, which we did foresee, is now over, although there are some nasty hidden problems yet to be revealed.
For the economy the situation has still to get worse before it gets better. The talk about "green shoots" is overdone. If you throw money at an economic problem you get the same result as a thunderstorm in the desert. It blooms rapidly before it withers. The test is when the tap is turned off and the authorities are already discussing just that.
The first four months of our new financial year have got off to a modestly favourable start, certainly a significant improvement over the same period last year. Ours is not a business that is easy to forecast as we are bound to be influenced by market movements and volumes. However, although complacency is not a word included in our mission statement, not least because we don't believe in mission statements, I do feel we can state that we view the first half of our new year with confidence."
For further information please contact:
• Gerard Luchini, Fiske Plc - Compliance Officer
(tel: 020 7448 4700)
• Gerry Beaney/ David Hignell, Grant Thornton UK LLP (Nominated Adviser)
(tel: 020 7383 5100)