Here is a media article in PerthNow regarding Paul Berresford. Where there's smoke there's fire!
Northwest Properties shareholders seek boardroom spill by: Nick Evans, Business Reporter From: PerthNow January 09, 2012 5:12PM
FORMER Paynes Find Gold chairman Paul Berresford is back in the middle of a boardroom stoush, this time at unlisted accommodation provider Northwest Properties.
Mr Berresford was one of the Paynes Find directors at the centre of a running shareholder brawl last year, over allegations the company wasted shareholder money and failed to capitalise on exploration prospects at its major gold project.
A shareholder faction at Northwest Properties is now seeking to remove him as a director from that company, alleging a range of corporate governance problems at the accommodation management company.
The stoush led to another of Mr Berresford’s company’s, Westate Capital, being removed as Northwest’s trustee and management company late last year, though PerthNow understands the legitimacy of that removal is disputed by Westate.
Sources say defamation threats are also flying over the shareholder letters sent around during the increasingly heated boardroom spill.
Mr Berresford has also written to Northwest shareholders denying any wrongdoing, and accusing his detractors of making “unfounded personal allegations”.
Northwest owns three caravan parks in the Pilbara, all provided accommodation to the mining industry. Northwest owns the Walkabout Hotel in Porth Hedland, along with the Karratha Caravan Park and the Harding River Caravan Park in Roebourne.
PerthNow understands the profitable company has assets worth around $50 million, and provided a return to shareholders in its associated unit trust of around 12 per cent last year.
But a group of shareholders, centred around Mr Berresford’s former business partners Mark Keene and Shane Thomson – also a Northwest director – are seeking to have he and fellow director Chris Kain removed at a meeting later this month.
In a letter to company shareholders last week Mr Keene accused Mr Berresford of failing to capitalise on the massive demand for accommodation in the Pilbara, saying the company is moving too slowly on its expansion plans.
He also said he has “significant concerns” about the corporate governance regime at Northwest, accusing Mr Berresford of failing to make financial statements available to shareholders, and of hiding a number of conflicts of interest when issuing contracts for maintenance and expansion work at the caravan parks.
The letter to shareholders alleges Mr Berresford has failed to properly disclose more than half a million dollars in payments made to his own accounting company, Everstone Private, for work done on behalf of Northwest.
Mr Keene says the incumbent board have also failed to keep the two other board members, Mr Thomson and Northwest managing director Brian Godfrey, properly informed about the business of the company, and have cut business deals on behalf of Northwest without the full board’s approval.
In a letter to shareholders sent last week Mr Berresford described the allegations as “unfounded personal allegations”.
“Those representations are without any foundation whatsoever and, no evidence has been supplied to justify those representations,” he said.
“The last quarter’s financial performance was the best ever achieved, and the [company] has paid monthly distributions since July 2010, in what have been globally uncertain economic times.”
Mr Berresford told shareholders he would be seeking to remove Mr Godfrey as a director immediately, in turn accusing the Pilbara veteran of breaching corporate governance standards by seeking to have Westate removed as Northwest’s trustee while he himself was a Westate director.
The company will be appointing Transfield Services’ mergers and acquisitions manager David Quirk to its board in place of Mr Godfrey, as part of a $5 million cash injection into Northwest by Transfield.
But that deal has also come under fire from Mr Keene, who says existing shareholders should have been given an opportunity to invest back into the company before it sought outside capital.
Mr Berresford recently quit as the chairman of Paynes Find Gold after furious battle between dissident shareholders and the incumbent board last year, centred around the company’s lack of progress since its 2010 listing.
The company had only $300,000 left in its accounts at the end of September, after raising $6.5 million in its November 2010 float. According to its annual report, Paynes Find spent only $960,000 on exploration activities between the float and the end of June, and around $1.9 million in combined corporate, employee and administrative costs.
Dissident shareholders ran several campaigns to spill the company’s board towards the end of 2012, and Mr Berresford sparked outrage in November when he reappointed a director to the board who had been rejected at the company’s Annual General Meeting the previous week.
Mr Berresford could not be contacted for comment this afternoon.
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Here is a media article in PerthNow regarding Paul Berresford....
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