Club Chairman Nigel Travis on minority shareholders

Hello and welcome to today’s match against Maidstone United, the first of which I am extremely pleased to be in attendance for as Chairman of this wonderful Football Club.

As you know one of the key aims of our consortium is to improve the Club’s engagement with fans. We have a lot of ground to cover and subjects include the academy, the women’s team, the stadium and many more topics. One subject that we cannot cover is the terms of our purchase of the Club. In the meantime, I want to thank Marshall Taylor and Martin Ling for all the hard work in achieving so much in such a short time.

Today I would like to cover our circa 10 per cent minority shareholders. As you are aware, our consortium (Eagle Investments 2017 Limited) have recently bought a circa 90 per cent majority shareholding in the Club. I happen to be one of these 10 per cent shareholders having been granted 1,000 shares by my father many years ago.

I understand that we have circa 625 minority shareholders and I am grateful to them all for their continued support over the years. I cannot apologise enough if you have been ignored in the past but moving forward our plan will be as follow:

• Firstly, all our consortium has agreed that we will be available to meet fans and shareholders as much as possible. Our Vice-Chairman and Principal Investor, Kent Teague has already set a wonderful lead in this regard. My immediate family will be at today’s game against Maidstone. My wife Joanna, born in Detroit, has been wonderfully supportive through the complex purchase of the Club. My 37-year-old son David, who is on the Board and lives in London, his wife Karen and my grandson Oliver, aged nine, will be present. I think many of you have also met my younger kids Ian, 12, and Brooke, 10, who will be there in their Orient shirts. I want to the point that we are a family Club and want to see as many kids as possible.
• At today’s game, you will also meet Rich Emmett who is my General Counsel at Dunkin’ and has worked with me for 13 years. I should point out that we all want to be at games as much as possible but obviously as several Directors live in the USA we will not be at every game.
• We will hold an AGM for all its shareholders to attend. I see this as an opportunity for all shareholders to meet my consortium, for us to listen to your views, and spend some time talking about the plans for our precious Club going forward.
• Later this year our shareholders will also receive a half year annual shareholders letter to keep them abreast of the Club’s progress on and off the pitch.

Please do email [email protected] with a copy of your shareholder’s certificate and your up to date contact details so we can ensure nobody is missed from our mailing list. If there is anything else, you think we can do to make you and the rest of the shareholders feel more valued please do let us know.

I look forward to meeting you all at Brisbane Road this season.

Up the O’s.

Nigel Travis