Documents filed at Companies House reveal that Madejski has converted a wide-ranging debenture he held over various Goodhead Group assets into 2,288,889 ordinary one pence ‘D’ shares in Polestar Print Holdings.
At the time of the pre-pack, it had been widely speculated that a mechanism would be found to allow Madejski to take some sort of stake in the new business, rather than write off his entire investment in Goodhead of some £100m.
In addition to bankrolling the company for the past five years, Madejski also had a number of personal guarantees in place on certain pieces of equipment, and with certain suppliers.
When the Polestar takeover was confirmed on 28 November last year, PrintWeek asked Madejski whether he would be taking a stake in the new company. At the time, he described it as "an arbitrary point".
The agreement states that the D shares in Polestar Print Holdings are entitled to receive 10% of any dividend paid to the first ranking A shareholder, which is Polestar owner Sun European Partners. Madejski’s D shares rank ahead of the other classes of shares in the business in this respect.
As a holder of D shares, Madejski does not have the right to attend general meetings or vote on company resolutions.
Separately, Polestar has entered into 30-day consultation with the remaining workforce at its Varnicoat gravure site in Pershore, which it proposes to close.
In its heyday, the site was Polestar’s biggest gravure operation, running a fleet of gravure presses and producing the then-huge News International contract, as well as polybagging at the sister Newspack facility.
Varnicoat was downsized to a single KBA TR10 press two years ago, and now employs 63 staff producing a number of contract titles. It is understood that Polestar intends to absorb the work into its Sheffield site.
Unite national officer Steve Sibbald said: "We’re in consultation, but it’s likely to close. The major change happened two years ago, which left the site with just one old press and we always knew that they were never going to reinvest there.
"It’s always a shock when people lose their jobs, but in Varnicoat’s case it’s definitely not a surprise."
