THE reform team bidding to win election to the board of
Australian Agricultural Company, armed with the backing of a key shareholder adviser, will seek to break all ties with the company's Futuris-dominated past.
At stake is control of Australia's oldest company and biggest cattle station owner as former directors who were purged or resigned in protest last year seek to return to the board. The annual meeting is on May 27.
RiskMetrics, whose clients include investors in AAco, has thrown its support behind the camp led by 20 per cent-shareholder IFFCO, whose team includes former chairman and acting chief executive Nick Burton Taylor and former director Chris Roberts.
Also on the IFFCO ticket are IFFCO's own representative, Arunas Paliulis, and the two recent appointments to the board, Stephen Lonie and Peter Hughes.
IFFCO is fighting to oust the other three directors — chairman Brett Heading, Charles Bright and Phillip Toyne. RiskMetrics says there is bad blood between the two sides and there is no possibility the three incumbents can work with the three main dissidents.
Mr Burton Taylor was ousted from the board last year by Futuris, now Elders, which then owned 43 per cent of the company. Mr Roberts resigned in protest. Mr Bright, as an Elders director, and Mr Toyne, as a director of Elders forestry subsidiary ITC, are linked to Elders.
IFFCO, Mr Burton Taylor and Mr Roberts were instrumental in AAco shareholders last month defeating a board resolution to buy two Northern Territory cattle stations, Tipperary and Litchfield, as part of a deal to allow Elders to quit the AAco register.
Mr Burton Taylor told BusinessDay that what finally induced him to oppose the acquisition was a sense that company strategy, with Elders-linked directors, was being determined by Elders' needs.
He described the AAco board's operational and strategic performance as "dishevelled and inconsistent". They had sold prime properties in the Gulf and Rockhampton Downs in Queensland that were "virtually irreplaceable".
"It's making the remaining assets cohesive that is my great worry," he said.
Mr Burton Taylor said the Futuris-appointed directors maintained they were not doing Futuris' bidding, but the board supported policies that benefited Futuris. They cancelled a $100 million share placement that would have diluted Futuris' stake and paid a dividend when times were tough to keep up the share price for Futuris' exit.
Mr Heading, who joined the board last June, agreed the company should have raised the capital at the right time. "If they had, it would not have been necessary to sell those properties," he said.
Neither he nor Mr Toyne were on the board then, but both were directors when the dividend was paid. Mr Heading said he would emphasise at the AGM what the board had achieved. "Elders is out of the way, the business is appropriately geared, and the drought is over," he said.
Risk Metrics said accusations that Mr Burton Taylor and Mr Roberts were pawns of IFFCO did not stand up. Both left the AAco board after the dispute with the former major shareholder, and Mr Roberts had a good reputation as a director on other boards.
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