Call for standing proxy vote holders to reliquish votes

THE Victorian Farmers Federation has called on holders of standing proxy votes for Grain Growers Association ballots to relinquish those votes.

It comes as the VFF said it would no longer use the standing proxy votes at upcoming annual general meetings of companies, including the GGA.

Standing proxies are votes in companies handed over by shareholders to a third party on a semi-permanent basis to use at the new holder's discretion.

VFF grains group president Geoff Nalder said the commodity group had agreed at its conference last March to only use the standing proxy system at the vote on normalisation of the AWB Ltd constitution, after which it would be abolished.

The grains group would soon begin returning proxies to original shareholders.

The controversial system was set up to influence voting at meetings of AWB, ABB Grain Ltd, GrainCorp Ltd and GGA.

The VFF sought proxy votes from shareholders of each company, which it used at their annual general meetings and extraordinary meetings.

Known as the "kiss of death", the system had limited influence on results.

But it also prompted private individuals to gather standing proxies for voting at GGA meetings to neutralise the VFF and push for change on the company's board.

Some of those are still held by GGA members, including some of the company's directors.

Mr Nalder said the standing proxy system was originally designed to influence voting at meetings of the three companies which had dual-class share structures: AWB, ABB Grain and GrainCorp.

He said now that the three companies had a single class of shares listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, the VFF had little influence on voting.

"The standing proxies' influence is insignificant compared with voting power of the commercial institutions (which had share holdings in AWB, ABB Grain and GrainCorp)," he said.

"So we are now giving them away."

Mr Nalder said the standing proxy system had caused greatest angst in GGA elections.

"We stand by the decisions we made in supporting directors in all companies," he said.

"We wanted the best possible leadership and corporate governance in those companies.

"But we have now done away with the proxies and I'd like to think the other people holding standing proxies (in GGA) will relinquish their standing proxies as well and go back to one vote for each member.

"It is distorting the ability of GGA to go forward as a well-led organisation."