The Bumi controversy

The fiercest recent boardroom battle at a big UK company comes to a head on Thursday. Shareholders will vote on whether to eject the board of Bumi, a coal miner with $1.4bn in sales, in favour of a group led by financier Nat Rothschild.

Controversy over Bumi, created by injecting Indonesian mines into a London-listed shell in 2010, has damaged the reputation of the UK market. A dossier passed on to the board alleges money running into hundreds of millions of dollars has gone missing from PT Bumi Resources, a related business. It has been claimed that some of the evidence was obtained illegally, by hacking emails.

The rebels want to publish a report into the dossier prepared for the board by Macfarlanes, a law firm. They aim to remove officials that they associate with the Bakries from the board and management of Bumi and related companies.

For its part, the incumbent board aims to speedily sever links with the Bakries by swapping Bumi’s stake in PT Bumi Resources for cash and the family’s shareholding in Bumi.

A plethora of motions give voters the opportunity to replace most, some or none of the current directors. A vote calculator created by the FT for illustrative purposes only allows you to explore the outcomes if varying levels of shareholders vote for or against the bulk of the board.

This gives an overview of the Bumi controversy. But the situation is fiendishly complex. For undecided investors, there is no substitute for reading Nat Rothschild’s letter to shareholders, the defence document prepared by the board, and supporting bumf published by the rival camps.

Interactive graphic by Patrick Mathurin, Luke Kavanagh, Emily Cadman and Caroline Nevitt

Data sources: Bloomberg, FT Research