Question

Harry is a member of EagleFly Aviation Ltd, a public company listed on the ASX. The constitution of EagleFly Aviation states that, in the notice of a meeting, each ordinary shareholder shall be given a copy of all proposed ordinary and special resolutions at an upcoming members’ meeting. The company has suffered a serious downturn and is performing very poorly as a result of changes to global flying habits in recent times. Harry and many other shareholders are very unhappy with the management of EagleFly Aviation because of the company’s poor performance and feel that they should have made operational adjustments early enough to cater for these hard times. The share price has also fallen drastically. Harry now decides to actively campaign against the current board of directors by contacting all of the company’s members and asking them to direct their proxies to him at the next AGM so that he can vote out the current chairman of the board who appointed the company’s senior management team. Harry hopes that this would send a strong message to the rest of the board and the entire senior management team that performance needs to be significantly improved.

REQUIRED: With reference to relevant legal principles and relevant legislation, use the IRAC legal problemsolving approach to explain whether and how Harry can contact all of the members of EagleFly Aviation Ltd. Explain also whether EagleFly Aviation Ltd can prevent Harry from contacting all of the company’s members

Answer 1

In this case Mr Harry is going to actively campaign against the senior management and board of directors due to Company's poor performance. He has to get the contact details of all members inorder to use proxies to vote out Companies current Chairman.As per the rules, members have right to request for a meeting in prescribed formats with their signatures on it. Company has the responsibility to conduct meeting within 21 days of receipt of request. Details of all members will be available at ASIC. The details of members can be availed from registered office of the Company by giving a formal request.

In this case members has the right to give request for conducting meeting as per above said rules and details of members can be obtained from registered office of the Company, which cannot be rejected in this case. Here, Mr Harry can get the details of members by giving a formal request, which will made available to him within 7 days of request. Company has no right in this situation to reject Mar Harry from getting details of members as this is not a case of rejection.