The flights are booked for a trip to Sydney tomorrow for the extravaganza that was going to be a showdown with Kerry Stokes at Seven Network shareholder meetings to approve the $2 billion WesTrac related party transaction.

Alas, the reclusive 69-year-old billionaire has taken the unprecedented step of declaring that his job as executive chairman of Seven doesn’t include fronting retail investors tomorrow.

The following email was this morning sent to various ASX heavyweights, along with ASIC, ASA, ACSI and Seven itself:

From: Stephen [mailto:stephen@maynereport.com]
Sent: Monday, 19 April 2010 10:33 AM
To: david.gonski, eric.mayne, robert.elstone
Subject: Stokes no show tomorrow

Dear David, Eric and Robert,

I note the report in The Australian today stating the following: “Mr Stokes, who will not attend tomorrow’s meeting”.

Whilst disappointing, this is not surprising given Mr Stokes has previously refused to attend Seven EGMs dealing with share buybacks.

This is just a short email as a Seven Network Ltd and TELYS3 owner to request that ASX advise Mr Stokes that, as executive chairman of SNL, he should attend tomorrow’s EGM and answer questions from shareholders.

Mr Stokes has been actively involved in one of the most comprehensive private proxy solicitation campaigns in recent corporate history and it is an insult to the ASX listing rules and retail shareholders generally that he is refusing to be accountable at this most important shareholder meeting to discuss and approve a $2 billion related party transaction.

Why should large institutional shareholders and proxy advisers have many hours of direct contact with Mr Stokes, yet he won’t even front the one opportunity retail investors get to debate the issues.

At all other major EGMs dealing with related party transactions in recent years (eg Allco-Rubicon, News Corp-Queensland Press) the conflicted executive chairman has attended and participated in the debate.

Please intervene and remind Mr Stokes of his responsibilities.

Regards, Stephen Mayne

Seven’s spindoctor Simon Francis replied with the following:

Hi Stephen

I understand there are a number of legal issues in this beyond your request.  We’d have preferred to have been able to have answered the questions before you fired off to the ASX.

Simon.

That’s a bit rich given the following email was sent to Simon almost 12 hours before the email to the ASX and there had been no reply:

From: Stephen [mailto:stephen@maynereport.com]
Sent: Sunday, 18 April 2010 10:48 PM
To: ‘Francis, Simon’
Subject: meetings query

Hi Simon,

Am writing a meeting preview for Crikey today and just wanted to check that Kerry will indeed be chairing all the meetings and fielding questions tomorrow.

I only ask this because there has been EGMs that he’s missed in the past due to his interest in the outcome and in similar situations I’ve seen an independent director step up to chair meetings or debates over specific resolutions.

Cheers, Stephen Mayne

Anyway, here are some questions on notice that will be sent to Kerry Stokes this afternoon so that written answers can be supplied to the meetings given that he won’t be attending:

  1. Rupert Murdoch and Frank Lowy have both been happy to answer this one Mr Stokes by saying there is no private debt, so here goes: once this deal is approved and you’ve taken out almost $100 million of cash from Westrac, will your 68% stake in Seven Group Holdings be leveraged in any way or are you privately debt free?
  2. Mr Stokes, do you now acknowledged that having three independent directors with an average age exceeding 70 and an average tenure of more than 15 years each was not the best way to have the 51% majority independent owners of Seven Network represented in negotiations for this huge $2 billion related party transaction?
  3. I note your commitment to help select but then not vote on the re-appointment of two new independent directors at the Seven AGM later this year. Will you consider extending this agreement to one third of the board and undertake not to vote on the re-election of these designated 3 or 4 directors into the future so that the independent shareholders can feel they are genuinely represented by directors not relying on your support to survive.

Please send any other suggested questions you’d like sent to Mr Stokes or asked tomorrow to stephen@maynereport.com.