How should small shareholders have a choice? Lessons from Gunns Ltd extraordinary general meeting

In Australian corporate governance, section 249D of the Corporations Act 2001 gives small shareholders a voice by empowering them to call for an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM). We discuss the principles behind this section, and illustrate its action with the case of Gunns Ltd, a logger of old growth forests in the green oriented island the State of Tasmania. Our conclusion is that the section needs to be redrafted with more stringent conditions attached to calling an EGM but while still empowering small shareholders.