Entering the boardroom of FTSE 250 property firm Daejan Holdings is like stepping into a time machine.
Immediately, you are greeted by swathes of the old fashioned oak panels and brown leather chairs that were so fashionable in the City in the 1960s and 1970s.
Even the rope lift that serviced this room 50 years ago is still intact – although staff are now forbidden from using it by health and safety regulations.
Daejan is as old fashioned as the boardroom seen in satirical spy movie Kingsman: The Secret Service.
If a room could sum up a company, this might be it.
For Daejan Holdings is the only publicly listed British firm that has never had a woman on its board – and steadfastly refuses to appoint one.
As The Mail on Sunday revealed in April, the company is locked in a bitter row with Government diversity tsars who say its top table is effectively ‘closed to women’.
Today, we can reveal that the showdown is about to step up a gear, with investors set to pile pressure on Daejan to modernise at meetings scheduled for next week.
Initially, the company had referred to the Orthodox Jewish faith of its executives. But the truth is more complicated.
Company secretary Mark Jenner has granted The Mail on Sunday rare access to Daejan’s inner sanctum to explain its singular resistance to change – although he will not allow us to take pictures.
He says the chairman – Benzion Freshwater, a secretive 71-year-old known as ‘Benny’ to friends – is utterly determined to preserve the legacy of his father Osias, who started building his property empire in the 1950s.
That even goes as far as leaving the boardroom largely untouched since Osias died in 1979.
Daejan Holdings’ offices in Freshwater House on Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End of London. The name comes from Osias Freshwater, who built Daejan’s empire in the 1950s
His father’s leather armchair hasn’t moved since then, and his diary sits undisturbed next to the glass ashtray in the bottom drawer of his desk, bookmarked to the last day he used it. It also means new ways of doing things are frowned on: Benny rarely uses email, for instance, preferring instead to communicate by phone, letter or in person.
And Benny sees no need for public relations, refusing to conduct investor roadshows or even be photographed, save for one image of him and Sir John Major hanging in the office.
He doesn’t allow his full name to be printed in the company’s annual report and has refused almost all meetings to discuss the issue of the board’s lack of women – including one proposed by The Mail on Sunday.
As much as they may rankle with diversity campaigners, the old ways have delivered results for Daejan and its shareholders so far.
The company is worth £935million on the London Stock Exchange with a £2.4 billion property portfolio in the UK and US that includes Africa House, a Grade II listed office block in Central London.
Sir Philip Hampton, former vice president of the CBI, is leading a campaign against Daejan’s all-male board
And it credits its prudent borrowing and investment for having maintained or increased its dividend for more than 30 years in a row.
The only time Benny has gone against his staunch principles, Jenner explains, has been during the recent run-in with Sir Philip Hampton, the outgoing chairman of GlaxoSmithKline who is leading the Government campaign against Daejan’s all-male board.
Hampton has been pressing Daejan to justify itself since the Government-backed Hampton-Alexander Review was set up to boost the number of women in FTSE boardrooms.
There were 152 all-male boards in 2010, which shows how quickly the rest of the business world has changed.
When a letter from Daejan to Hampton was returned saying he was not resident at that address, the company was left with no option but to scan the letter and send it by email. The letter, seen by The Mail on Sunday, demonstrates just how determined Daejan is to stand its ground.
‘Whilst we appreciate the views of your review body they are not enshrined in law or any formal regulation and we are not obliged to comply with them,’ the letter says.
‘In terms of board appointments, we will continue to select candidates for vacancies as they fall due entirely on merit and do not intend to impose gender variation for the sake of it.’
Benny has now agreed to go one step further by meeting a top 20 shareholder and a shareholder advisory group to discuss the disagreement in person.He will meet fund manager Sanjeet Mangat of Aberdeen Standard Investments on June 12, along with a representative from Pirc, a shareholder advisory consultant.
It is a rare move for such a private man, but Benny has been avoiding the confrontation for months. The meeting is likely to be tense because Benny has no intention of giving ground. Jenner explains that he tends to ignore new governance standards unless they are enshrined in the rules for listed companies.
For example, Benny acts as both chief executive and chairman – something that is not against the rules but is seen as poor practice. This prompted Pirc to advise shareholders to kick him off the board at last year’s investor meeting.
It said: ‘No one individual should have unfettered powers of decision as combining the two roles in one person represents a concentration of power that is potentially detrimental to board balance, effective debate, and board appraisal.’ But Benny has been on the board for nearly half a century and has no intention of handing over power.
As I leave, Mark shakes my hand and says: ‘We’re a little bit feisty and we won’t be told what to do – not by anyone. We’re really not sexist in any way. It’s just that we won’t be bullied into changing how we do business.’
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