The Rangers board have been dealt a blow after shareholders voted to reject a plan for a new share issue.

Chairman Dave King required 75% support from shareholders on resolution 11 following last week's annual meeting but missed the target by 0.5%.

A successful vote would have allowed the Ibrox board to issue shares as they wished in a bid to raise further capital for the club.

Essentially, the proposal was to offer shares to investors without needing to involve all existing shareholders in the process. They will now be unable to do so.

The resolution said the directors would have been given the power "to allot equity securities" for cash "pursuant to the authority of the directors".

A statement from Rangers said: "The company is pleased to declare the outcome of the AGM. Resolutions one to ten were successfully passed. Resolution 11 did not achieve sufficient votes to be passed.

"The board is delighted to see that the bulk of the company's shareholders are content with the company's progress."

It added: "The votes for Resolution 11 were considerably higher than the directors had anticipated and resulted in an increase of 1.9 million votes for the resolution based upon last year's AGM vote.

"This was almost enough to see the vote carried as a special resolution.

"The directors will consider carefully shareholders' views on this vote, consult (where practicable) with those who did not vote or opposed the resolution and identify the company's next steps after that process is complete."