Angry Chelsea Pitch Owners demand share trading inquiry Gray Smith, a corporate lawyer who was elected on Friday on to the CPO board, will now lead an inquiry to establish the circumstances behind the additional share sales and the identities of those new shareholders. It was also agreed to hold another EGM so that shareholders could put forward their own proposals. New chairman Steve Frankham devoted around two hours of yesterday's AGM to questions and comments from the floor, with impassioned calls for the meeting to be adjourned until the identity of the new shareholders had been established. "While those shares are active, everything else becomes a farce because they could sway the meeting disproportionately," said David Spring, a CPO shareholder. The board refused to adjourn the meeting and said that it was not legally possible to annul the sale of those shares but, prior to voting on their 11 resolutions, did guarantee that no more shares would be sold until a new EGM was held. Frankham then unexpectedly used his proxies to oppose the further sale of shares to people who are not existing shareholders. "I did it because the room asked me to," he said. Sewell, who has been CPO secretary since 1993, explained how CPO came to sell too many shares prior to the vote on whether Chelsea could buy back the freehold to Stamford Bridge. "The number of shares that we were used to selling was 150, 200, 250 a year," he said. The authorisation more than covered every year it was required to. During that three-week period, I received approximately 1,800 emails; the phone was ringing every 15 minutes. We were just processing the shares. It was simple human error. It was a mistake. Rick Glanvill, another board member, also responded to criticism from shareholders. "It is a serious accusation that he deliberately exceeded his authorities," he said. Glanvill added that he had been unaware of the limit to the shares CPO could sell, admitting that the "huge mistake" caused him sleepless nights. Around 150 people attended Friday's meeting, with many shareholders expressing the view that they were not opposed to moving grounds, but on condition that CPO retained the freehold of a new stadium.