Medusa Mining has had a change of name, but not much of a change in fortunes

Former Ten Sixty Four managing director Ryan Welker is locked in battle with the company. Picture: Colin Murty

Long suffering shareholders in the gold miner formerly known as Medusa Mining might not have seen much of a return on their investment over the past few years, but they’re at least getting entertainment from the company’s board ructions.

Medusa hasn’t had the best of the last decade, with its Philippines gold mine spending several periods in suspension due to the chop-and-change approach to mining by governments in the country, generally failing to deliver on shareholder hopes, and – far more seriously – announcing workplace deaths with the kind of regularity that harks back to a far earlier era of the mining industry.

The company is now known as Ten Sixty Four, after taking out an unlisted Queensland gold explorer of the same name in exchange for 10 per cent of its own stock and then, for some reason, taking on the explorer’s name as its own.

But the company is now locked in a battle with former managing director Ryan Welker – for a brief period best known as Gina Rinehart’s son-in-law – and a group of shareholders worth about 20 per cent of the company’s register.

The ructions kicked off shortly after Ten Sixty Four acquired the Queensland exploration assets from Mr Welker and associated parties, with Mr Welker appointed managing director in March after it sacked Andrew Teo from the job.

But in early July Mr Welker suffered the same fate, amid allegations – which he denies – he had failed to disclose a financial interest in a company handed drilling work on Queensland exploration tenements.

Welker associate Vitrinite called in New York hedge fund Arbiter Partners Capital Management to assist with a board spill, and the affair has since descended into high farce.

Mr Welker, former husband of Mrs Rinehart’s daughter Hope, was forced to back down on plans to oust chairman Jeffery McGlinn and non-executive director Andrew Hunt after realising that doing so would leave the company with fewer than two Australian taxpayers on the board – a breach of the Corporations Act. Then in September a second spill motion came a cropper after Arbiter turned out not to be the owner of any Ten Sixty Four shares, meaning the requisitioning group didn’t meet the 5 per cent threshold needed to call the spill.

Having sorted out the administrative issues – although Ten Sixty Four is still looking through the details – the parties are slagging off the opposition.

Ten Sixty Four on Wednesday released fresh details of its allegations against Mr Welker, saying it had found evidence of more payments to companies associated with his interests – passed through the same drilling company to another entity controlled by Vitrinite – and pointed out that driller Ranger Equipment had submitted invoices worth $293,569 for two months worth of work, contrary to the claims by the Welker group that “the drilling contract is not an important contract based upon its very low spend”.

With the spill meeting not due until October, there’s plenty of distance to go in this one – but the suggestion from a few bemused long-term Medusa holders that the company simply hands back the Queensland ground and cancels the shares seems to be simplest solution.