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Unlocking the best of 2020:

ESG, discoveries and raising cash

Hon Bill Johnston MLA

volution Mining Ltd executive chairman A particular concern for Klein is the in- ESG following his company’s entry to the
EJake Klein has warned ESG reporting creasing size of sustainability reports. For ASX200.
standards will spiral “out of control” if dia- Evolution, this accounted for almost 25% of “It wasn’t that we weren’t doing it, but we
logue between companies and institutional the company’s annual report for FY2020, have to be more front and centre in tell-
investors does not remain bilateral. compared to only 7.5% in FY2019. ing people what we’re doing,” Zeptner ex-
Speaking at the final Paydirt Unlocked Klein said there needed to be a sensible plained.
for 2020 – via video link from his Sydney cap on the amount of information which ac- “Our sustainability report is now 20
base – Klein said while companies such tually needs to be reported to shareholders. pages this year. It was four pages, so that
as Evolution were committed to meeting “The remuneration component of these shows you how things can grow. I’d like to
the highest possible standards for ESG, he annual reports is now, in our case, 30 endeavour to keep the sustainability report
believed differing shareholder expectations pages, however, we then have four proxy within the annual report, but I see that some
were complicating matters. advisors writing about 30 pages on our 30 people have now got sustainability reports
“[We] need some clarity from institutional pages, so there’s 150 pages of information that are larger than the annual report.
investors as to what they really want mining on our remuneration,” Klein said. “It’s a bit of the tail wagging the front of
companies to focus on and what the high- “I think the big risk in the ESG space is the dog…I’d like to think people are going to
est priorities are; that would be very good that institutions basically contract this work actually read that information if you’re going
from our perspective,” Klein said. out to proxy advisor firms and you then get to put it in there.”
“This is an area where the standard is go- a snowballing effect and your 50 pages of Before the onset of the COVID-19 pan-
ing to continue to rise and companies will ESG becomes 300 pages and it starts to demic in March, the rise of ESG was the
have to adapt – and I think the best way we become more or less an outsourced thing. biggest talking point in the industry. Since
can do that is pre-emptively. “It’s really important that the dialogue be- then, the resurgence of the exploration sec-
“I think the further we can move to agree- tween a company and an institution stays tor has dominated most of the headlines.
ing what those standards are, what every- bilateral and not multi-lateral because oth- De Grey Mining Ltd kicked off a long-
one should report to, the better off we are erwise it’s going to get out of control.” awaited run of exploration success stories
[going to be]. I keep saying to our team we Klein’s comments were echoed by with its Hemi discovery in the Pilbara before
don’t want to do things because they look Ramelius Resources Ltd managing direc- Chalice Mining Ltd joined the party with a
good on the wall; we want to do things be- tor Mark Zeptner, who spoke about his re- major new mineral find at Julimar. Azure
cause it really is good.” cent involvement with the “serious side” of Minerals Ltd then rounded out a memora-

Page 12 FeBRUaRY 2021 aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT