are these people guilty, page-53

BrisConn rebel in secret meeting with chairmanLucy Battersby and Mark Hawthorne
April 4, 2009

REBEL BrisConnections shareholder Nicholas Bolton flew to Sydney yesterday for a secret meeting with the company's chairman, Trevor Rowe.

When Mr Bolton was contacted by BusinessDay he confirmed he was in Sydney for "high-level meetings" related to BrisConnections, but would not confirm or deny if he had met Mr Rowe.

BusinessDay has been told the two protagonists in the long-running battle had a private meeting following Mr Bolton's stunning court victory over BrisConnections this week.

While the pair met, Melbourne's Supreme Court ordered that BrisConnections provide unit holders with limited access to the toll-road company's financial records before an extraordinary general meeting in Brisbane on April 14.

The corporate regulator lobbied for shareholders to be provided with information about the financial status of the embattled company, which has begun construction of Brisbane's $4.8 billion Airport Link project — the biggest infrastructure project under way in the country.

Any corporate information sent to unit holders must be cleared by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and should be couriered to individuals next week.

The Easter holiday allows only four working days for unit holders to consider the information and return a proxy form.

Legal counsel for Nicholas Bolton struggled to contact their client all day for instruction, and the courtroom buzzed with rumours that Mr Bolton and Mr Rowe were meeting in the Sydney suburb of Balmoral, where Mr Rowe lives.

Justice Ross Robson has ordered that two planned meetings be held concurrently on April 14 in a Brisbane hotel.

The Supreme Court of Victoria asked BrisConnections to change the shareholder meeting venue after lawyers for Mr Bolton's company, Australian Style Investments, told Justice Robson the proposed location — BrisConnections' headquarters in suburban Brisbane — was a "construction site".

Holding the meeting at a hotel would be "far better then having shareholders wandering down the Gympie Highway to get to a construction site", Justice Robson said.

Shareholders will vote on April 14 to wind up the BrisConnections trust and on resolutions to reinstate unit distributions, postpone the second instalment due date and remove the company's board.

A spokesman for the toll-road builder said holding the meeting at the company headquarters and across the road from construction sites was intended to "demonstrate to shareholders there is a real project under way employing 1300 people".

The meeting will now be held at 10am on April 14 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, the spokesman said.

Justice Robson yesterday reiterated his concerns that BrisConnections executives had access to secret financial information.

"Anything the (BrisConnections) trust has got belongs to the unit holders," he said.

"At the end of the day, the unit holders are the (company) owners."

A spokesman confirmed last night BrisConnections would mail information packs to shareholders next week after they are approved by ASIC.

He confirmed the packs would include details of a Deloitte report that said unit holders would still be liable for $1.13 worth of instalments if the trust were wound up.