On 28 November, an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting of AS “Rīgas Siltums” (RS) was held, during which a decision was made to dismiss the entire board. At the same meeting, the shareholders also decided to reduce the board’s monthly remuneration in accordance with regulatory requirements and AS “Rīgas Siltums”’s new remuneration policy.
A competition will be organized to appoint new board members. To ensure the board’s continuous operational capacity until the candidates selected through the competition are appointed, Jevgenijs Belezjaks, Mārtiņš Lazdovskis, and Ivars Šulcs were temporarily appointed to the board.
Since, at the RS shareholders’ meeting on 6 October, the Riga City Council did not propose a vote on the dismissal of the entire company board, the Ministry of Economics (EM), as the second-largest shareholder, proposed to convene a new extraordinary shareholders’ meeting without delay to decide on EM’s proposal to dismiss the entire board.
At the 6 October RS shareholders’ meeting, the agenda item regarding the board and its tasks included only one draft resolution for shareholders to vote on – EM’s proposal to dismiss RS Board Chairman Jevgenijs Belezjaks and Deputy Chairman Gatis Sniedziņš. However, this proposal was not approved.
As one of the shareholders of AS “Rīgas Siltums,” EM on 3 September proposed convening an extraordinary RS shareholders’ meeting, inviting all shareholders to decide on the board. EM assessed that the RS board was not sufficiently ambitious and did not show the initial initiative for active involvement to prevent a tariff increase. The RS board is responsible for organizing board work and should have taken primary responsibility for the delayed reaction on the tariff issue, which initially led to a higher proposed RS tariff. Consequently, EM had to intervene directly as a shareholder, organizing the work of the RS management and board to prepare a proposal for tariff revision, resulting in a 70% reduction of the initially proposed RS tariff increase.
“Rīgas Siltums” is one of the main district heating suppliers in Riga. The company’s capital is owned 49% by Riga City Council, 48.99% by the Latvian state (with EM as the shareholder), 2% by SIA “Enerģijas risinājumi. RIX,” and 0.005% by AS “Latvenergo.”