May 8, 2008

Vaalco Fires Back In Proxy Contest

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Vaalco Energy Inc., Houston, (NYSE: EGY) has fired back at the attempt by New York-based hedge fund Nanes Delorme Partners I LP to place three directors on its board, charging the dissident shareholder has initiated “a costly and disruptive proxy contest” and that its actions reflect a conflict of interest with Vaalco shareholders.


Vaalco chairman and chief executive Robert L. Gerry III says that Nanes Delorme only recently acquired shares in Vaalco, and that the hedge fund has a recently revealed secret partner, privately held Zug, Switzerland-based E&P Pilatus Energy SA, whose purported leader was convicted and sentenced by a French court to five years in prison for fraud, embezzlement, bribery and kickbacks in “the biggest political and corporate sleaze scandal to hit a Western democracy since the Second World War.”


Nanes Delorme has criticized Vaalco for disappointing stock performance, ill-advised E&P diversification in the U.K. North Sea by management, failure of management to consider a sale of the company and other issues.