The news comes after a group of shareholders led by wealthy Queensland investor Warren Brown sought to remove the company’s managing director Paul Burton and former chairman turned non-executive director John Elkington from the board.
The group is seeking to replace the pair with Exante Data senior adviser Grant Wilson and mining consultant Dr Anthony Robinson.
But since the requisition notice to oust the pair was lodged in July, TNG has appointed well-known WA mining veteran and Pilbara Minerals co-founder Neil Biddle as chairman.
The aggrieved shareholders have complained about the slow progress of the company’s Mt Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project in the Northern Territory and argue the current board does not hold the breadth and depth of experience needed to develop the mine.
However ISS said in a report on the corporate manoeuvres that the requisitioning shareholders and nominee directors had failed to provide a compelling rationale for their respective proposals and had not presented sufficiently compelling arguments as to how their nominee appointments to the board would contribute to long term shareholder value.
“It appears that the incumbent directors have in fact presented a superior case for having acted appropriately to fulfil their duties to all shareholders and that they have appropriately considered and acted in the best interests of the company and shareholders to grow the business in the future,” ISS said in its report.
In a letter to shareholders, Mr Biddle, who was the managing director of TNG before Mr Burton, described the move against the company as an “unwarranted and unnecessary attack by a small minority of shareholders”.
He argued the group was seeking to use the Corporations Act to seize control of the TNG board at the company’s upcoming general meeting of shareholders on September 20.
Mr Biddle warned shareholders he and recently appointed director Elizabeth Henson would consider their directorships terminated if the dissident group’s move was successful.
