Dear Fellow Empire Shareholders,
Whilst a very long time reader and studier of this forum over the years, this is my first post and I know some of you will appreciate and understand this comment.
For those of you who may not know me, as my username suggests, my name is Kent Quinlan, former Acting CEO and Company Secretary of Empire, former senior executive of ERM Power (ERM) and QGC. I have at times in the distant past been referred to on this forum as ‘Superman” by one talented and creative names geniusJ. Those of you who have previously contacted me, please feel free to contact me if you wish to verify that this is indeed me and these are my posts.
I thought it appropriate that my username represent my actual name, as people who know me well, would appreciate, I like to be open, honest and hold and protect my integrity and stand up for both what I believe in and what I stand for, and I am prepared to ask the hard questions that others don’t and challenge the status quo where I feel that all will benefit by me doing so.
Those who know me well would also say I am very passionate about what I do and I can tell you that I am very passionate about Empire, as not only have I invested a significant amount of my money into it, I have invested a substantial, if not all of my life and energy into it over the last few years, this passion is something which I personally feel is lacking at the level it should be at present at Empire and I have a very strong affinity with both Empire and ALL its shareholders and its difficult past and want to see ALL Empire’s shareholders prosper in the future, whether they be major or minor ones.
From my experience, junior companies like Empire need people with passion (for example QGC had passion in spades from the Board/MD down to the staff – and history shows us that was an enormously great success story for its shareholders) and you need lots of passion to sell the good story that Empire has. After all if you don’t fully believe in and sell the story, why would anyone else be interested in wanting to buy shares (other than day-traders) and the share price will not move upward, but instead drift backwards as we have seen this year.
Now you may ask why I am telling you this, well I am telling you this, because as a shareholder in Empire, and after many suggestions from Empire shareholders who have contacted me since the start of the year, I have recently formally provided the Board of Empire with my nomination as a director, and my consent to act as a director, for a resolution to be put to shareholders at the upcoming 2015 AGM.
Now some of you will know that I left ERM Power in July 2014 shortly after completing my secondment to Empire as the Acting CEO, a secondment which came after both the former Managing Director of ERM, Mr Philip St Baker and the new Chairman of Empire, Mr Tony Iannello both requested me, after the 2013 AGM, to take on the interim role, after the successful S249D action by ERM of an Empire that had obviously undergone the dramatic change and needed some CPR and life support so to speak.
I accepted that request, rolled up my sleeves and took on what was a significant challenge at that time, let alone after accepting that role, the new team found out that the financial position of the company was worse than what the new Board had anticipated, based on information which was available to it when the new Board members and management took up our positions in late 2013, and the subsequent problems with the Red Gully-1 D Sands and the Red Gully Processing Facility only exacerbated that challenge.
Let me tell you, it was no walk in the park for those involved, far from it and every single person working at Empire at that point was literally working very significant hours to keep the company going and in my particular case I spent an inordinate amount of time in Perth, away from my family in Brisbane.
However, with the extraordinary efforts of all involved and in particular two other ERM seconded staff/consultants who respectively led both the fixing of the facility and the planning and execution of the perforation of the Red Gully-1 B Sands, Empire was finally back to a stable position.
After leaving ERM, I continued to work for Empire on effectively a contractual basis, in fact for various reasons, my consulting contract was not signed until after I left in January 2015, and I also agreed to defer payment of my services until after the rights issue was completed – so in effect I only got paid for my services for the period July-December 2014 at the start of June 2015, in order to assist the company with cashflow.
This work for Empire was particularly centred on the purchase of ERM’s WA gas assets, company secretarial matters amongst other things and the 2014 AGM, until 29 December 2014, when I decided that, upon the actions or inactions as they may be considered, by some of the then Board of Empire in respect of something which occurred at that time, I felt that I had no choice but to advise them that I was terminating my services to Empire effective immediately.
You probably might not also be aware that I participated in the same Placement in March 2015 along with, and as a result of the significant participation by the new Board of Empire member Mr Philip Garratt, for a total of 40,000,000 ordinary shares and then I took up my entitlements of 10,000,000 ordinary shares in the subsequent Rights Issue in April 2015 plus applied for additional shares in the Shortfall offer for a further 10,000,000 ordinary shares, and as such between the respective issues I acquired a total of 60,000,000 ordinary shares and 15,000,000 of the associated options.
You will note from further postings, that I have been in correspondence with Empire since mid-June 2015 (a period of ~10 weeks) in regards of my nomination, from first advising them of my intention, intervening discussions and meetings to finally submitting my formal nomination, which I will describe in further postings. This was an interesting time and some interesting discussions and comments were made and had during this period.
During those discussions, I was advised that the likely date for the upcoming 2015 AGM would be Monday 23 November 2015 with a planned morning meeting. But please note, as I am not aware of Empire having announced or confirmed any particular date as yet, then the date could quite easily change, and as a cynical person might say, maybe even be brought forward.
So as you would appreciate, the AGM is likely just under 3 months away, so my campaign to convince ALL shareholders that I can add value both to the Board of Empire and to Empire as a whole, and to gain shareholder support for my election is not a sprint but a marathon in some ways due to the lengthy timeframe, so I would hope my fellow shareholders would understand that I will need to pace myself over this time and respond accordingly to new information as it comes to hand.
This means that I will strive to provide shareholders with a reasonably steady stream (over the period to the Notice of Meeting being released and then to the AGM) of information relating to me personally, my own personal comments and opinions on a number of areas and issues confronting Empire and any further information which I believe supports my ability to add value to the Board of Empire and Empire as a whole.
In some cases, until the Board of Empire releases the Full Year 2015 Financial Accounts, the Notice of Meeting and Explanatory Memorandum to support the resolutions to be put to the AGM, I may not be in a position to provide any meaningful information, comments or personal opinions on these documents until they are released to all of us, but I have been told on a regular basis in the past that I am very forensic in my analysis of documents. So I await the release of those documents.
I welcome questions and topics from shareholders in regards of any issues which currently, or may in the future impact on Empire and I will do my best, within my constraints to provide you with my personal thoughts, opinions and comments on those questions and topics. Please note that I have been out of Empire for over 8 months now, and like you I usually am only aware of the same information that you are aware of which is put to the ASX platform by Empire, other than information related to my personally as is the case with respect to most of these postings.
Some of the information, comments and things that have happened up until now with regards to me personally, and my roles would probably surprise a number of you and may even shock some, as I provide my personal thoughts, opinions and background to my nomination and my interaction with the relevant people and parties, over the coming period so as to provide shareholders such as yourselves, with the maximum amount of accurate and relevant information for you to consider, in my quest to gain your support for my election to the Board of Empire at the upcoming 2015 AGM.
So as not to effectively write a “War & Peace” novel in one posting, I will break this initial post into 5 components, with the fifth component being probably the one of most interest.
Stay tuned!!!!
