Article from Friday's Australian

I share the concerns of the punter interviewed here......



From the Australian:

"International commodities trader Noble Group has rolled the board of coal play Resource Generation in a tight shareholder vote, drawing the ire of the company’s smaller investors.

ResGen’s incumbent board, including managing director Paul Jury, were all removed and replaced by Noble’s nominees after almost two months of tension between the group and its largest shareholder.

The vote came down to the wire, with the final results going in Noble’s favour by 51 per cent to 49 per cent.

The result sparked a sharp fall in ResGen’s share price, with the stock sliding 14.3 per cent yesterday.

Noble and its associates Shinto Torii, Cadogan Investment Holding and Altius Investment Holdings had fallen out with the previous ResGen board over proposed funding for the development of its large Boikarabelo coal deposit in South Africa.

Noble and Altius had been at the forefront of a so-called debt club that had been pulling together financing for
Boikarabelo, but called for a spill of the ResGen board as it emerged that the company had struck an alternative
€480 million ($705m) funding deal with a little-known group out of Switzerland.

Mr Jury, in the lead-up to the meeting, had feared that Noble and its associates would use their stakes in the
company to overturn the board and force it to abandon the Swiss funding package in favour of the more “onerous” terms of the Noble funding.

But efforts to get the Takeovers Panel to intervene and block Noble and its partners from voting their shares on the board spill failed.

Shane Sofra, a shareholder at the meeting who had voted against the Noble resolutions, told The Australian after
the meeting that he believed the regulators had “dropped the ball”.

“What’s happened today is an absolute disgrace,” Mr Sofra said. “My concern is the company may now be driven into the ground by vested interests.”

The alternative funding from Switzerland, which had been signed by a private group called HAB & JPR Privee, was conditional on Noble’s resolutions being defeated at yesterday’s meeting.

However, it is understood that the alternative funding — which had a 20-year term and an interest rate including upfront fees of about 4.5 per cent — may still be available if the new board can demonstrate its credentials."