Sage leads Padbury board spill

Dissident shareholders in Padbury Mining have recruited Tony Sage to lead a board spill at the junior iron ore explorer.

A leaked letter states that a group of shareholders, lead by former chairman Denis McInerney, have secured the consent of Mr Sage, along with Mark Gwynne and Paul Kelly to stand for election to the Padbury board.

The letter also states the shareholders are seeking the removal of the company's two non-executive directors, Luke Innes and Colin Stirling.

Mr McInerney recently wrote to shareholders outlining his concerns about the management of the company including the issue of 714 million unlisted options by Padbury last year.

Last week Mr McInerney won a 2 day injunction from the Supreme Court preventing the sale or exercise of a large proportion of the options issued to four major recipients he believed had close ties to the company.

Three of the four recipients subsequently agreed not to convert their options until a further order of the court.

In the letter proposing the board spill the dissident group expressed concern about the share market performance of Padbury Mining over the last six months.

It states that the company's share price has fallen from a high of 3.9 per cent in early December last year to a low of just 1 cent last month.

Padbury's flagship asset is the Peak Hill iron ore project, about 100km north of Meekatharra, where it is aiming to confirm a major magnetite iron resource of 3-5 billion tonnes. It hopes to announce an initial resource by the end of the year.

Last week it announced it had signed a conditional agreement with an unnamed Chinese group, which would see the Chinese party pay $5 million for 143 million Padbury shares at 3.5 cents each.

It also said it had signed confidentiality agreements with seven other Chinese groups interested in investing in either the company or Peak Hill project.