A band of disgruntled retail investors is taking the fight at Fission Uranium Corp. to a new level, vowing to launch a proxy fight with the aim of ousting the company's board.
The shareholder group, known as FCU Oversight, said in a news release on Thursday that it "intends to recommend for election at the upcoming annual general meeting of the company a board of directors to replace all, or at least a significant number, of the current board."
Earlier this week, the group said it had retained Blair Lockhart, a geologist and former Crown prosecutor, as a special adviser.
FCU Oversight first clashed with Fission chief executive officer Dev Randhawa over his plan, announced this summer, to merge Fission with Denison Mines Corp., another small uranium producer.
Fission's Patterson Lake South project in Saskatchewan is regarded as an unusually promising uranium discovery, but a dismal market for uranium has limited its development options.
FCU Oversight thought that the proposed merger with Denison undervalued Fission and waged a fierce fight against the deal, which required the support of two-thirds of the company's shares.
In a vote earlier this month, the merger proposal got more than 50 per cent but fell short of the required level of support – a rare example of retail investors turning back a proposal supported by both management and many institutional shareholders.
Relations between Mr. Randhawa and the shareholder group have not warmed up since then. In an interview shortly after the vote, he said he saw no reason to sit down with FCU Oversight and stressed that his job was to develop the Patterson Lake South deposit.
The company's annual general meeting will be held on Dec. 15.
Ian McGugan