Petropavlovsk investors seeks reappointment of ousted directors

Petropavlovsk major shareholder Prosperity Capital Management (PCM) has notified the Russian miner that it intended to call a general meeting to consider the election of directors who were ousted at the annual meeting last month.

The meeting is intended to enable shareholders to consider the election of five former directors who were unexpectedly rejected, along with two new directors.

Petropavlovsk said Prosperity claimed to manage more than 20% of the miner's shares, although the requisition was being proposed by three Prosperity funds controlling 11.4%.

The re-appointments would be of Timothy McCutcheon, Fiona Paulus, Harry Kenyon-Slaney, Pavel Maslovskiy, and Damien Hackett.

The two new independent non-executive directors proposed by Prosperity are Vitaly Zarkhin and Michael Kavanagh.

There would also be a court hearing later on Monday to hear an application by Everest Alliance, with a 7.5% interest, that temporary directors Peter Hambro, Alya Samokhvalova, Angelica Phillips and Johnny Martin Smith were not validly appointed at the annual meeting.

Petropavlovsk said last month that four shareholders (UGC, Fortiana, Everest Alliance and Slevin) had acted in concert to engineer the removal of the sitting directors. It has also asked the Takeover Panel investigate.