Porn king's push for Payne control fails

CBD

Plans by a group of investors, including the porn king and adultshop.com boss Malcolm Day, to secure board control of the gold explorer and market dog Paynes Find Gold Ltd have fallen short.

At a shareholders' meeting yesterday, the Perth mining and hip-hop clothing entrepreneur Carlos Popal and geologist Ray Muskett managed to secure only 47 per cent of the vote in their attempt to join the company's board.

It was only their ally, Douglas Taylor, who managed to get enough votes to be re-elected as a director.

But it appears the saga is not over. ''The whole thing is rigged,'' Popal alleged to CBD yesterday. ''We could carry on for months and months. Really, this is a job for ASIC to intervene.'' Popal said he was more interested in a forensic accountant going through the explorer's books rather than securing a board seat.

Paynes, whose chairman is Paul Berresford, said in a statement after the meeting that ''there appeared to be confusion in the minds of some shareholders, as some shareholders had lodged multiple proxy forms''. Paynes shares, which are in suspension, have fallen from 20¢ to 6¢ since their listing a year ago.

SWANS FLY AGAIN

Finally, good financial news from one of the fledging ventures headed by former ING Real Estate Entertainment Fund chairman Richard Colless.

Colless was keen to trumpet yesterday that the Sydney Swans AFL football club, of which he is chairman, was back in the black.

''We continue to take the view that, for an operation such as ours, the cash profit is more important than the statutory one,'' Colless said in a statement posted on the Swans website.

The full-year net profit of $114,956 was the first positive financial result the club has reported in four years. The profit was largely thanks to an increase in corporate sponsorships.

Colless, who sits on the board with former Mirvac chief executive Greg Paramor and investment banker Andrew Pridham, also treated Swans members to some finance-101 speak.

''Our aim is to grow our level of revenue across all fronts at a rate in excess of expenditure growth,'' he explained. Still, it was probably not a vintage year financially for the Swans, whose social club (chaired by Paramor) was placed into administration in May owing about $1.9 million.

The Sydney Aussie Rules Social Club's plans to change the name of its King Cross pokie venue (which was leased from the ING fund chaired by Colless) from Club Swans to Cazalys Sydney were never to be.

COLONIES REVOLT

Another vestige of the British empire finally looks like slipping away. The company secretaries of Australia (along with those from several other countries) are pushing ahead with their uprising against the dominance of the mother country in their professional body.

The Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators' international members (which make up two-thirds of its members) are increasingly incensed with the Brits holding 18 of the seats on the institute's 28-member council.

But, sadly, the revolt is not as orderly as one might expect from company secretaries, going by the correspondence following last week's three-hour (and adjourned) ICSA general meetings in London.

''Regrettably, the first meeting descended into disarray and ended with an adjournment when it became apparent that there were numerous and material errors in the notice of meeting and explanatory memorandum,'' the president of the Australian division of the ICSA (aka Chartered Secretaries Australia), Douglas Gration, said in a message to members yesterday.

''There were many members, not only those from the divisions, who had travelled long distances to be at the meeting and who had put much effort and cost into gathering proxies to have their say, who were bitterly disappointed with this outcome.''

A second meeting, which had been requisitioned by non-British-based members seeking ''fairer and proportional representation on the council'', was also adjourned. Gration said 99 per cent of the proxies from the international divisions voted for the proposed changes.

But the Pommy-dominated ICSA is not budging.

It announced the meetings were adjourned ''because several requisitioners of the second meeting, and others supporting them, disrupted the first meeting called by [the] council by repeatedly requesting an adjournment''.

''On several occasions, the chairman tried to conclude the first meeting and move on to the second meeting, but persistent demands by the requisitioners of the second meeting for an adjournment meant that these efforts were frustrated,'' the ICSA chief executive, Simon Osborne, said.

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