Share prophets have an iffy reputation but have tonight released a missive about the generous share deals announced at the AGM. Some of the criticism seems fair to me over here on the UK although we probably won't mind if they bring in the well. Interested in your thoughts over there. Cheers, Robby.
It is an immediate red flag for any stock listed on AIM, which holds its Annual General Meeting thousands of miles away. Irrespective of the nature of duel listings, companies on the London Stock Exchange should be directly accountable to British investors. Where shareholder approval is required, British investors should be given the opportunity to vote for or against proposals concerning the running of their companies. For God’s sake, this is the age of the Internet, so why should investors be expected to traipse all the way to the other end of the world, so they can take part in a show of hands vote in Perth, Western Australian? Funnily enough, speaking of Perth, this is exactly where Tangiers Petroleum (TPET) has just held its AGM, at which the board gained approved for approval for the company’s new and ludicrously generous Share Plan... In a great triumph (is that the right word?) of shareholder democracy, all of the resolutions at Tangiers’ AGM were passed through the support of roughly 30,000,000 shares. When you consider that Tangiers has 178,000,000 shares in issue, this means that 16% of the company’s shareholders voted in favour of the proposals put by the board. On its own, this fact is absurd enough, but when you look into the detail of the various resolutions, it quickly becomes apparent what a mockery this is. Most of the resolutions voted on at Tangiers’ AGM deserve much closer scrutiny, but the two stand-out items were the adoption by the company of the new Share Plan (Resolution 6) and the share awards and loan made to Managing Director David Wall (Resolution 7). The Share Plan looks like it is going to come back to haunt shareholders. Remember that this is a company, which just loves to issue new shares. Look at the RNS history of Tangiers and you will immediately see the large number of equity issues in the last twelve months or so. Having established its penchant for dilution, it now appears that Tangiers wants to ensure its new directors get in on the act, through interest free loans made by the company. That’s right. Cash-strapped and deeply troubled Tangiers, which had issued equity twelve times in the year preceding its latest desperate heavily discounted placement, is now authorised to make interest free loans to its board to allow them to buy shares in the company. Even Bill Kelleher and his fellow directors at New World Oil & Gas had the decency to pay interest on the $1million of loans they took out from their company to allow them to join in a placement party! Full details of the Tangiers Share Plan can be read in the Explanatory Memorandum, which was released with the announcement of the AGM, but suffice to say this plan looks like the epitome of extravagant, risk free and guaranteed rewards for directors, which are the blight of so many companies on AIM. David Wall must have woken up with a decidedly content feeling this morning. Lucky old Mr Wall became Managing Director of Tangiers on April 15th. In the RNS which announced his appointment, shareholders learned that Mr Wall would be paid a salary of $300,000 a year, would be entitled to a performance bonus of up to 50% of base salary and was granted 4.5million shares, subject to shareholder approval. This incredibly generous package, for an embattled company like Tangiers, was always going to raise a few eyebrows. Have a read of the RNS to see the vesting criteria for Mr Wall’s 4.5million shares (worth roughly £400,000), but the interesting point about the loan Tangiers is going to make to him is, of course, that it is interest free. Interest free! £400,000!!!! As you can probably guess, I don’t plan to put any money into Tangiers. I couldn’t care less if the share price goes up from here, as what is clear to me is that anyone who puts money into this company is buying into a lavish executive beneficiary scheme. No thank you! To get Twitter updates from ShareProphets as they happen - See more at:
http://www.shareprophets.advfn.com/...ourage-dilution#sthash.tVcVUeba.TBpb4wAN.dpuf
