smh: lewis tay not getting xinghua support

D-Day for Dynasty shareholders

Scott Rochfort
March 21, 2011

Shareholders in the listed soap opera Dynasty Metals are expected to be treated to their most melodramatic episode yet, when the iron-ore explorer meets in Perth today for its extraordinary general meeting.

Two months after a Dynasty director, Lewis Tay, called a meeting to dump three of his fellow directors (who opposed his use of company funds to trade in the shares of other mining explorers), the company's freshly appointed independent chairman, Stephen Penrose, might have the tricky job of deciding the legitimacy of some of the votes cast at today's meeting.

The warring sides both agreed to the appointment of Penrose as chairman on Friday. But allegations surfaced over the weekend that Tay attempted (with no success) to vote a large batch of proxies at Dynasty's last annual meeting (that contained different signatures) against the re-election of his fellow director Malcolm Carson.

Advertisement: Story continues below Carson, who leads Dynasty's exploration activities, is subject to today's vote along with the directors Ian Levy and Graham Anderson.

''Dynasty needs a new, trim and dynamic board, with members committed to the company, who are able to work as a cohesive team and are capable of devoting the due time necessary to progressing Dynasty's business plan to extract maximum value from Dynasty's Western Australian iron ore assets, while minimising costs," Tay, from Point Piper, said in a statement last week.

Tay's coup attempt is opposed by Dynasty's largest shareholder, XingHua Iron & Steel, which bought into the explorer (via a placement last year) in the hope of one day not having to buy iron-ore from Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. It is believed the Chinese steel company is more impressed with Carson's exploration activities than Tay's share trading abilities.

XingHua's alternate director on the board is the Vietnam war veteran and former Liberal Party member of the Queensland State Parliament, Terry Gygar, who over recent years has developed a relationship with the steel company's founder, Maochun Chen.

XingHua, which has a 13 per cent stake in Dynasty, was founded by the former Chinese army cadre and some of his fellow veterans in 1985.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/dday-for-dynasty-shareholders-20110320-1c25y.html