cottee: i’ve got the numbers - enb news

Cottee: I’ve got the numbers

Friday, 11 November 2011

RICHARD Cottee says he has the numbers to call for an extraordinary general meeting in order to spill the Nexus Energy board.

Richard Cottee

On his blog he said his legal representatives had received 81 requisitions for an EGM while he had received commitments from another 43 shareholders, which gave him the support of shareholders holding a combined 10.68% of Nexus’ shares.

He said the level of support he had received sent a message to chairman Michael Fowler ahead of Nexus’ annual general meeting next week.

Cottee is urging shareholders to vote against the reappointment of Fowler and Michael Arnett and associated remuneration packages so the EGM is not needed.

It is another battle in Cottee’s war against Nexus he has been waging since he stepped down as chief executive last September, after a deal to farm-out part of the Echuca shoals asset fell over.

Cottee said Nexus had to farm down an interest in the shoals, in order to get the cash to keep its Crux asset by drilling a well before retention laws kicked in but the rest of the board did not think farm-out terms were in the best interest of the company.

He claims after stepping down he received a “pretty nasty, long letter threatening to sue me if I sought employment elsewhere or talked to the media or anything” from Nexus.

The former chief executive turned the tables on Nexus by launching an action through the Victorian Supreme Court, seeking a declaration that clauses attached to his contract restraining him from getting another job were null and void.

“I have [been on] lots of boards and never, ever had this sort of thing before,” Cottee reportedly said to Fairfax in October.

“Normally there’s a collegiate [feeling] of acting in everybody’s interests, of binding everyone together and if there’s something to be done, then they repose that certain amount of trust and confidence in the managing director and if they have not [got trust] they should get rid of him or her or it.”

He said he would even be open to returning to Nexus if the board was replaced, suggesting there was a personal element to his decision to walk away.

“The relationships, I would not call them poisonous or anything but I think there could be an element of ‘you are getting too big for your boots, Richard’. So there you go. It was subterranean.

“Obviously when the trial comes about, all will be disclosed.”