As far as the 10am 14 April meeting is concerned: BCSCA transfers were required to be registered with the Link share registry service by close of business THU 9 April and Proxies were required to be faxed to BrisConnections or Link by 10am SUN 12 April.
So we are not of course now talking to new prospective BCSCA sellers about 14 April voting matters. All those instructions are set and I'm sorry that we will only be able to make them known through our actions at the meeting.
There will be a lot of press there -- and updates will stream pretty fast I'm sure -- as the aggregate votes become known.
14 April meeting, if it goes ahead at all following 9am Supreme Court of QLD ruling to be handed down by Justice Dutney -- well, if the meeting gets under way we are all facing extraordinary circumstances with highstakes for all.
So as everyone already can see it will not be a simple casting of votes like a general AGM where the financial accounts are adopted and there might be a symbolic protest vote over the remuneration committee's bonus package for the directers. And then off for a scone and a chat with management.
The stakes are so high that there will be Federal Politics type scrutiny of each and every proxy form and vote by teams of lawyers for all parties. Not wanting to be too facetious, but think 2004 US Predential Election -- crucial State of Florida.
What we expect is that the meeting will run at least all day 14 April as much of the time will be spent with lawyers scrutinising the proxies and challenging the authority to act of attendees.
+Meeting could well then be adjourned with unfinished business.
And this might even be a good idea to give stakeholders some more time to breathe -- however if the 29 April call is somehow deferred or adjourned or rescheduled it is not totally certain what this will mean for the $2.9m of syndicated funding to the project. We are sure that this cadre of mostly foreign bank commitments, if not wanting to exit the Brisbane Airport Toll altogether, would like terms to be re-struck to take into account the current economic environment -- so any wiggle room to declare the commitments void, such as a change in the 29 April 2009 $1 call, could bring the project down. Most would agree that this would be a bad outcome for Australia.
David C. Barrow, Trustee, The Julie Anne Barrow Charitable Trust
http://www.barrow.org.au/