(News story updated with details)
The Dniproenerho power generating company (Zaporizhia) was unable to hold the meeting of its shareholders that was planned for March 27.
Ihor Malyi, the deputy director of Energy Company of Ukraine's department of corporate management, and Dniproenerho board member Dmytro Tevelev announced this to Ukrainian News.
According to Tevelev, the State Commission for Securities and the Stock Market did not witness registration of shareholders for the meeting because the Ukrnaftohaz financial company (Kyiv) failed to release the register of Dniproenerho's shareholders.
Malyi said that Energy Company of Ukraine proposed registering shareholders for the meeting on the basis of certificates and notes provided by shareholders to confirm their ownership of shares in the company but Dniproenerho's board rejected this proposal.
"We arrived for registration at 10:27 and we voiced a proposal to hold registration based on certificates and notes, but the mandate commission refused us," Malyi said.
He stressed that this method of registration of shareholders was absolutely legitimate.
Moreover, according to him, the Kyivenerho power company held a meeting of its shareholders in this way in 2006.
According to Tevelev, Dniproenerho received Energy Company of Ukraine's proposal to hold the shareholders meeting on the basis of certificates and notes confirming ownership of shares in the company after 10:30, when the registration period had already ended.
Therefore, according to him, registration did not take place.
Moreover, Tevelev again stressed the Ukrnaftohaz financial company did not provide the register of the company's shareholders.
"As far as we know, the law today does not make provision for holding meetings in that way (via registration of shareholders based on certificates and notes confirming their ownership of shares in a company)," he said.
Both the representative of Energy Company of Ukraine and the representative of Dniproenerho said they were interested in holding a civilized meeting of Dniproenerho's shareholders in order to approve the company's financial plan for 2008, amend its statutes, and approve its management organs' reports for 2007.
Dniproenerho's Board Chairman Yurii Bochkariov suggested at a press conference that the shareholders' meeting that was postponed on March 21 would most likely take place after resolution of the issue involving the holder of the company's shareholder register.
Representatives of both companies also said that they knew nothing about registration of Dniproenerho's shareholders by the Ukrnaftohaz financial company outside the territory of the Dniproenerho building.
One of the Ukrnaftohaz representatives that conducted the registration told journalists that he did not have the register of shareholders and that they simply acknowledged the presence of the private shareholders of Dniproenerho that gathered near the Dniproenerho building.
In total, the Ukrnaftohaz representatives acknowledged the presence of shareholders holding about 1% of the shares in the company.
Bochkariov also read at the press conference a protocol of the State Commission for Securities and the Stock Market that states that the March 27 meeting did not start and was not conducted because the register of Dniproenerho's shareholders was not provided.
Bochkariov also said that he was summoned to the Fuel and Energy Ministry on March 26 to hand over Dniproenerho's seals and statutes because he was allegedly relieved of the post of board chairman of Dniproenerho at a March 21 shareholders meeting and Mykhailo Mykhailov appointed to replace him.
Bochkariov stressed that he would most likely meet with representatives of the ministry soon.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Ukrnaftohaz financial company, which keeps the register of Dniproenerho's shareholders, and the registration commission that Dniproenerho's board set up started registering shareholders for participation in the meeting on Thursday morning.
The Energy Company of Ukraine said that a meeting of the shareholders of Dniproenerho took place on March 21 and that a decision to replace the management of Dniproenerho was made at the meeting.
According to the Energy Company of Ukraine, the shareholders of Dniproenerho also decided at the March 21 meeting to replace Ukrnaftohaz with the company called United Stock Registrar - Zaporizhia as the holder of Dniproenerho's register of shareholders.
However, Dniproenerho said that the meeting of its shareholders that was planned for March 21 did not take place because its former shareholder registrar (the Ukrnaftohaz financial company) refused to hand over Dniproenerho's shareholder register to the new registrar (a company belonging to the Prominvestbank group).
Press conference with Situations Modeling Agency entitled "Earlier Kharkiv elections: possible consequences and prospects for participants of electoral process"
