A SPECTACULAR board spill is looming at Australian Agricultural Company, the country's oldest company and biggest cattle station owner. Directors voted out in a messy spill last year are likely to return.
A report today by a key shareholder proxy adviser, Riskmetrics, is believed to recommend voting out the chairman, Brett Heading, and directors at the annual meeting this month, and replacing them with a ticket led by the main stakeholder, IFFCO Poultry.
The Dubai-based IFFCO, with a 20 per cent shareholding, wants the return of the former chairman Chris Roberts and chief executive Nick Burton Taylor.
Sources last night said another proxy adviser, CGI Glass Lewis, and the Australian Shareholders Association were also likely to urge shareholders to vote out Mr Bright and Mr Heading.
Mr Burton Taylor and Mr Roberts were ousted from the board last year by Futuris Corp, which then had a 43 per cent stake in the company.
Also on the IFFCO ticket are its own representative, Arunas Paliulis, and the two recent appointments to the board, Stephen Lonie and Peter Hughes. The annual meeting is in Brisbane on May 27.
In a letter to shareholders this week, IFFCO said it would vote against the current AACo chairman Brett Heading, and directors Charles Bright and Phillip Toyne.
Risk Metrics has not opposed the re-election of the cattleman Mr Hughes and Mr Lonie, who are seen as "cleanskins", having been appointed only on April 28.
Mr Heading said last night that he had heard nothing about any recommendations by the proxy advisers.
Riskmetrics, which is advising one of AACo's main investors, wrote a strong report last month opposing a deal put forward by the board to buy two big Northern Territory cattle stations. Riskmetrics said shareholders had not been given enough financial information.
The proposal was widely criticised as being overpriced and facilitating the exit of Futuris from the AACo share register.
The board last week had apparently buried the hatchet with IFFCO by supporting the appointment of Mr Paliulis as a director, but IFFCO said in this week's letter that it had lost confidence in the board.
Shareholders overturned the board's recommendation to buy the Tipperary and Litchfield cattle stations - owned by the prominent QC Allan Myers - at a rowdy extraordinary general meeting last month.
Opposition to the recommendation was led by IFFCO, Mr Burton Taylor and Mr Roberts.
After the EGM vote Mr Heading suggested he and two other board members associated with Elders were on borrowed time as the AGM loomed.
"Based on the vote today, I'd have to say that there's a target painted on Phillip Toyne and myself and Charles Bright," he said.
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