DeWalt schreef op 8 april 2022 11:05:
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Just Eat Takeaway’s Alpine junket raises shareholders’ hackles
Just Eat Takeaway: taking the piste
Unperturbed by a recent share price that resembles a ski slope, Just Eat Takeaway staff decamped this week to Arosa in Switzerland. Hundreds of employees from the food delivery group’s two-dozen international markets were delivered to the Alpine resort for Snow Fest, an all-expenses-paid skiing and team-building junket.
Snow Fest (or Snow Event, as it was once known) is an annual tradition for Takeaway, the Netherlands-based company that took control of UK-listed Just Eat in February 2020 and was ejected from FTSE’s indices in September 2021 for being too Dutch. With Covid-19 restrictions having hindered the enlarged group’s outings since the merger completed, JET went large this time around.
Staff had suites at the four-star Excelsior hotel with leadership levels, including founder Jitse Groen, said to be checked into the Tschuggen Grand, a five-star-superior that has a multilevel spa and a private mountain railway. Everything that might be custom-made in JET’s corporate orange had been, from the complimentary ski jackets and hats to the deckchairs and beanbag sofas that littered its expansive festival site. Slopes novices were offered free lessons. Drinks vouchers were provided to encourage après-ski. Organisers of the four-day blowout had everything covered, from free transport between party venues to lip balm in the goody bags. Their requests to keep any evening excesses off Instagram and Snapchat were not universally respected.
Watching on from a distance were JET shareholders. The company has an unusually active ownership register that includes hedge funds Tiger Global and Baupost, as well as Cat Rock Capital, which since late 2021 has been publicly lobbying Groen to sell or spin off its Grubhub division in the US.
All three are thought to be deep underwater on their investments, JET shares having collapsed since October 2020 by more than 70 per cent, and patience may be wearing thin. An analyst at one of JET’s biggest shareholders spent much of the week poring over livestreams from Arosa’s public webcams and counting the number of orange jackets visible, presumably on the lookout for any shareholder-unfriendly levels of extravagance.