Herd on the Terrace: James McClements, MinRes use new ethics committee to sidestep Chris Ellison questions

All hail the Mineral Resources board for creating an Ethics and Governance Committee in response to the belated revelations of Chris Ellison’s related party dealings and noughties tax dodge. But, sadly, this noble-sounding body was used by outgoing MinRes chair James McClements at the AGM on Thursday to give non-answers to shareholder questions about various governance and disclosure failings. And it is being used by MinRes to sidestep questions about its failure to disclose $3.8 million of payments to Ellison’s British Virgin Islands tax dodge vehicle Far East Equipment Holdings. Sidestepping ASX questions, MinRes pleaded ignorance by pointing to Ellison being its only remaining director from when the Far East fiasco was somehow left out of related party transactions in the 2006 prospectus and three subsequent annual reports. “Excluding the knowledge of Ellison, the present board would be speculating a view as to the reasons disclosure was not made,” it repeatedly pleaded. MinRes has ducked our questions about whether anyone had simply asked Ellison to help answer ASX queries and what assistance, if any, the long-serving boss had provided. We got this non-answer from a MinRes spin doctor: “All matters relating to the board’s investigation and ongoing enquiries are being managed by the Ethics and Governance Committee with support from external legal counsel and independent of the managing director.” The spin doctor later refused to say what, if any, inquiries the Ethics and Governance Committee had made. While being escorted into the AGM, committee member Jacqui McGill ignored questions from a HOTT operative about whether it had asked Ellison about the noughties disclosure failings and received any responses. Combined with McClements proclamation that Ellison has been excluded from all board discussions about his various battles, there now appears to be at least two degrees of separation between the main man and public disclosure. Here’s hoping Australian Securities and Investments Commission investigators penetrate all this secrecy. Rattle of Hastings Andrew Forrest’s mining investment outfit Wyloo Metals is keeping a close eye on rare earths hopeful Hastings Technology Metals. Wyloo got behind Hastings in 2022 with a $150 million loan to buy a slice of a Canadian-listed Neo Performance Materials, which has a rare earths magnet factory over in Estonia. But Wyloo spat the dummy this month about Hastings borrowing $5 million loan from an outfit called Equator Capital as it tries to shore up hundreds of millions of dollars to develop its Yangibana mine and processing plant in the Gascoyne. Issuing a default notice against Hastings, Wyloo claimed it had been pushed down the creditor pecking order. But it quickly made a strategic withdrawal. Forrest’s deal man Luca Giacovazzi claims Wyloo is supportive of Hastings efforts to fund Yangibana, yet he is also flagging the “constructive redemption” of the $150m loan ahead of its October 2025 repayment deadline. This story has legs. Where’s you, Mrs Robinson? Chris Ellison and his mother-in-law Jennifer Robinson, and every single other shareholder on the Kali Metals register, were no-shows at the lithium explorer’s AGM on Wednesday. The junior’s share price has been battered over the past 10 months thanks to a torrid lithium market, plus revelations by one of our operatives in late January that Robinson and other Ellison associates sold the bulk of their Kali stakes for hefty profit as his flagship Mineral Resources bought in. Kali’s directors didn’t look thrilled to see that same pesky operative show up at the AGM, despite questions only being open for shareholders. Luckily for them it seems those shareholders have cut their losses and couldn’t be bothered rocking up to BDO’s CBD office, meaning the whole show was over in a matter of minutes. Our operative applauded once the long and exhausting meeting came to an end. “No standing ovation?” one of the directors quipped.