agm comment, page-9

I attended and sat on the left hand side of the packed room. The meeting started at 1.00pm and there were a few stragglers, some even coming at 1.40pm after the interesting part was over. Listening to Simon one cannot underestimate this guy's professionalism. The Chairman seemed a decent elderly gentleman. More a figure-head, bit of an old-fashioned ditherer. I too was impressed with the resolutions 6-8 being terminated, despite the proxy votes being in favour of a bonus to non-executive directors. This is very rare in a public company. The fact that these guys said NO to free options despite the votes saying yes tells you they are fair dinkum. They didn't think it was right when the Andash project was delayed. The resolutions were initially proposed before the latest announcement saying there was an indefinite delay.
Hugh McKinnon gave about a 15 minute talk on the political situation in the country. He then answered all questions from the floor, as did Simon Milroy.
The meeting concluded at about 2.20pm and then it was the standard beverages and pastries outside the room. There were about six other rooms at the RACV club and meetings going on in all six. I had a quick coffee outside, spoke with Hugh for about ten minutes and left. Hugh is very switched on with regards to the political situation in KR. It's a complex issue. My take on matters is that

1. Roza Otunbayeva needs to exit the Presidency (she has stated she will not run again).
2. Almazbek Atambayev (the current PM) needs to become President.
3. Omurbek Babanov needs to step up from Deputy PM to PM.

The popular consensus is this will happen. Presidential elections are due later this year and Roza has stated she will not run again for the Presidency. Roza has been great following the revolution in April 2010 but we as KGL shareholders would be far better off with Atambayev in the Presidential role and Omurbek Babanov, the pro-business leader of the Respublika party, as Prime Minister. Babanov is very pro Andash and pro foreign investment to kick start this country's economy.
The five families that are against Andash have ties with the former regime. They were "protected" for years. The village used to be one "collective" farm and the sheep were supposedly going to be distributed to each family in the village on an equal basis. Somehow, these five families ended up with the majority of the sheep, others got a small portion and some got zero. Equality hey? These five families have had the power base for years since that "equal split".