VN Capital Update Dear Fellow High Arctic Shareholders,
I write to update you about the company. Over the past few weeks, we’ve engaged in very constructive conversations with Cyrus Capital and reached an understanding with them that minority shareholder’s concerns over High Arctic’s poor corporate governance and lack of strategic direction could be best alleviated by appointing a new representative to the Board. Unfortunately, High Arctic management and Board rejected that reasonable solution in spite of a majority of shareholders in favor of it and so Wednesday’s special shareholder meeting will go forward.
In twenty two years of managing money, VN Capital has never encountered a more arrogant Board. Their shambolic attempt to reorganize the company wasted countless time and energy which the company then tried to avoid any responsibility for by blaming us for their mistakes. Finally, rejecting constructive attempts on our part along with Cyrus to amicably resolve matters shows that management and the Board is floundering, bereft of any strategic vision, concerned only about itself and is not acting in the best interest of all shareholders.
In our opinion, we believe that High Arctic’s path forward should be clear: (1.) immediately return all the existing cash on the balance sheet to shareholders; (2.) sell the remaining Canadian operations (Team Snubbing would be an obvious buyer); (3.) sell the PNG rigs; and (4.) distribute all proceeds from those sales to shareholders.
As such, on Wednesday VN Capital will be:
- Voting AGAINST Resolution #1 fixing the number of directors to four;
- Voting FOR Resolution #2 to remove Michael Binnion as Chairman;
- Voting AGAINST 3A naming Michael Maguire as a nominee to become Chairman; and
- Voting FOR 4A, 4B and 4C naming Harvey Joel , Maryse Saint Laurent or Richard Kreger as nominees to become Chairman.