Critical JKX AGM Set for June 30

East Europe-focused upstream company JKX Oil & Gas will hold its annual general meeting 10am (0900 GMT) June 30 in London, it said May 25.

The board is in for a bumpy ride as Eclairs Group representing 27.5% of the votes and Proxima Capital with 19.9% of the votes have declared that they no longer support the board's current composition. If passed, the Eclairs resolutions will see the departure of all executive and independent directors.

No proposals have been made public by either Eclairs or Proxima as to how they would see the future direction and management of the company. Eclairs initially slipped up by calling for a vote to dismiss all the directors and to replace them with just one new appointee, which is fewer than the UK legal minimum. Now there are more directors nominated.

The present board has been in place since the end of January 2016. The company says the board's mandate was to provide a greater level of transparency and governance to all stakeholders, resolve its historic legal disputes, reduce costs, and drive the business forward with a new strategy to unlock the potential reserves in its key operating assets.

It is now working with Schlumberger on hydraulic fracturing wells in a major gas field in Ukraine but it also has assets in Hungary and Russia.

JKX said: "The Board believes it has delivered, and is continuing to deliver, on each of these core objectives. It believes that the proposals by Eclairs, combined with Proxima’s apparent intention to either support these proposals and/or propose other board changes, would significantly compromise the independence of [the] board."

William Powell