Ferals aplenty go to Rio in 2001

Security was extremely tight for the Rio Tinto AGM at Darling Harbour with a large contingent of ferals protesting out the front and about 40 antagonistic unionists, greenies and Aboriginal groups in the meeting as proxies or shareholders.

In spin doctoring terms, Rio chaiman Sir Bobby Wilson ran a good meeting which was all wrapped up in an hour and 40 minutes at 11.10am.

A number of the individual resolution were mildly controversial but debate was opened up on everything at once and then we just went to a poll on the lot. They didn't even show us the proxy votes which was a pretty arrogant performance.

The Greenies blew it by asking too many repetitive questions and giving too many long-winded rants on uranium mining and Jabiluka such that Sir Bobby was supported by the majority in winding things up earlier than expected.

You could go for hours on corporate governance, environmental and globalisation issues with Rio so why waste so much time on Jabiluka when Rio have shelved current plans to develop the mine in the first place and the incoming Beazley government makes it even more unlikely.

About five different representatives from the CFMEU got up and made a couple of good points, including the issue of a Rio contracted security guard shooting a protestor dead in Brazil. Needless to say the head of security was sacked and Rio have reviewed their security procedures worldwide after this illegal shooting.

The Greenpeace bloke wanted the names of every Namibian uranium miner on sickness benefits and we even had a visitor down from Bougainville. When a feral tried to film this on her Sony she was ejected by a couple of the 20 or so burlies keeping the meeting in order.

A bloke from Darwin tried to claim a Canadian uranium giant was funding the protestors to get the price of ERA down which is about as far-fetched as you can get.

There were no constant interjections like at some of the classic ERA meetings of the past where ferals would scream out "Hiroshima" or "Death" throughout the address by then chairman Campbell Anderson.

I'll never forget the page five lead in The Daily Telegraph we got out the exchange at the 1998 meeting when a protestor screamed out "What about our children?" to be told by Campbell whilst three burlies ejected her: "With a little bit of luck you won't have any."

Using the proxy of a Save Albert Park friend I got up and asked four questions:

1. Why do we still have a majority of eight current or former executives dominating the board and outnumbering the six non-executive and unaligned directors, none of whom have any direct mining experiences. The likes of Gary Pembeton and John Morschel are good non-exec directors but they'd get swamped by the mining management and this is exactly what caused all the problems at BHP when they had four executives on the board and a weak group of non-execs who didn't stop the carnage with things like Magma Copper and HBI. The union sponsored resolutions last year made this exact and Sir Bobby promised to look at it but has really done stuff all and promised little change. With the share price approaching $40 it is hard to complain but these are still pretty basic corporate governance principles.

2. Under instruction from her investment guru husband, Mrs Crikey sold her North shares $2.85 and her Ashton Mining shares at 84c whilst jaunting around the world last year. Rio Tinto took both over for $4.75 and $2 a share respectively within weeks of our sales so I wanted the board to admit they'd paid too much for next time Paula raises this sore point around the dinner table. Unfortunately, Sir Bobby said he was very pleased with both acquisitions.

3. We then had the only real laugh of the meeting in response to my question as to whether they were interested in making a counter bid for BHP. Sir Bobby asked if I'd recently sold any BHP shares and when I said "no" he said this would suggest they were not about to make a bid. (Geddit, laugh all round at Crikey's expense.) In all seriousness, he said that any rival bid from Rio would have emerged by now and he welcomed the consolidation of the mining industry with such a merger. Crikey had a chat to former Rio CEO and current Westpac chairman Leon Davis after the meeting and suggested he get together with former North MD Malcolm Broomhead and a couple of other mining gurus to oppose the BHP merger with Billiton and offer themselves as a slate of new directors. We're meeting later today to work up a strategy!!!!! Only joking there. Leon smiled wryly and we all agreed any campaign against the merger needed a focal point like Woodside had with their board and most WA politicians mounting a well-funded campaign.

4. The final issue to the massive $19 million in "non-audit" fees paid to the auditors Price Waterhouse Coopers over the past two years which has dwarded the $13 million in regular audit fees. A compromised auditor is the last thing you need when you have a management dominated board but we never got to really debate this properly amid all the Jabiluka and union emotion which was fair enough but just a little excessive given this was a shareholders meeting. In answering the question Sir Bobby simply said the audit fees were not excessive by world standards, auditors are best placed to advise on other issues such as tax because they know the company so well and PWC rotates the lead partner role every few years.

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