[miningmx.com] – CHANGES to the Board of Forbes Coal & Manhattan
(Forbes Coal) would seem to indicate that the JSE and Toronto-listed company has
taken to heart criticism from its major shareholder, Denver-based Resource Capital
Fund (RCF), that the coal firm’s corporate governance standards were in question.
Stephan Theron, president and CEO of Forbes Coal, has been brief in his responses to
e-mailed questions about a series of events that date from September 26, in which
RCF said Forbes Coal’s R440m bid for Rio Tinto’s Riversdale Mining did not carry full
Board approval.
The “dissident’ shareholders, as Theron later described them, also criticised Forbes
Coal for its corporate governance, which it alleged was streaky.
On September 27, Theron responded that the dissident shareholders had launched a
“smear campaign’, the aim of which was to depress the company’s share price and
therefore make it more vulnerable to a takeover. The bid for Riversdale Mining had
received full Board approval, including that of the RCF representative, he said.
The outcome, however, is a board reshuffle that sees three Forbes Coal directors
resign. One, David Gower, was a member of Forbes Coal’s corporate governance
committee. Another, David Stein, heads Aberdeen International, the in-house fund
management company of Forbes and Manhattan Corporation, the parent company of
Forbes Coal.
One replacement on the board is Mike Price, who is RCF’s UK representative and helps
bolster the presence of RCF on Forbes Coal as he joins Ryan Bennett, a partner at RCF
and a member of the Forbes Coal Board from inception. A third Board member to
resign is Grant Davey, a former employee of AngloGold Ashanti, the JSE-listed gold
firm.
Theron’s take on the changes is as follows: “The situation has been resolved and the
new directors were mutually agreed to. The addition of experienced coal mining
individuals should be viewed as a very positive step for the company’.
Indeed, the addition of John Dreyer, a long-standing coal executive in South Africa,
and Craig Wiggill, who is of similar standing in the industry, are good appointments,
especially as Riversdale’s asset, Zululand Anthracite Colliery, stands to bulk up Forbes
Coal’s production as it seeks 4 million tonnes/year (Mtpa) in output.
Theron declined to comment further when asked via e-mail to expand on the Board
changes and the apparent resolution with RCF.
