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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 932, 6 April 1881, Page 2

What does it mean ? What little swindle is on now ? Are questions which met us at every turn yesterday, after the arrival of the mail from the south, and the circulation of notices to shareholders in the South Pacific Petroleum Company. The Notices are to the effect that an extraordinary general meeting of the shareholders will be held at the office of the Company, 34 Clarence Street, Sydney, ou Wednesdav, the 20th of April, . inst., for*the following business, viz.:— Ist.—To determine as to the disposal of the unallotted Shares of the Company. 2nd.—To empower the Directors to Mortgage the Assets of the Company for advances made to the Company. 3rd.—-To amend the Articles of Association in respect of the number of members necessary to form a quorum at a General Meeting.

The third proposition is reasonable and understandable enough ; but the first and second, we do not understand at all. The Directors have played “ ducks and drakes ” with the unalloted shares until no one will make even a sporting offer for them ; and their recent action is, more than any other, calculated to place them at a discount. But the seeking for power to mortgage the assets of the company, is—wanting the light of the superior intelligence of the Directors themselves — so monstrously outrageous as to cause one to wait with bated breath for a solution. Already the local shareholders are on the alert, and have called a meeting for this evening to consider the position of affairs, and what shall be done in the future. It seems to amount almost to impertinence for the Directors to have first of all squandered the time and money of the shareholders, and then, after a full year of waste to ask them for power to hypothecate the shadow of interest remaining to them, so as to solely idemnify the Directors against loss. We regard this last as the most bare-facedly impudent suggestion yet made, and, advisedly, we counsel the shareholders to look well to their position, which is just this:—We are either in the hands of designing persons, with covert intentions of a dark and mysterious kind, or we have a Directorate composed of a pack of fools—men not fit to be entrusted with the affairs of others. We have not patience to continue this subject; for, in the face of the fact that we counselled a loyal adhesion to the Company by paying up the late calls, we are now impelled to an opposite course ; and, without the slightest reservation, wo

allege that it is incumbent on the New Zealand shareholders to protest in an emphatic way against the course pursued, and to combine in refusing to pay up any more calls until we have a positive voice in the administration of affairs. The meeting called for the 20th of April, barely gives time to reply; no invitation is given for an expression of our opinion; and no proxy papers are sent by which any expression of that opinion could be made available.