Kenmare director voted off board

SHAREHOLDERS in Kenmare Resources have voted overwhelmingly to remove a long-serving director from its board following an incident earlier this year involving a female colleague.

Donal Kinsella, one of the original founders of Kenmare, a titanium mining firm worth nearly €600 million, was forced to apologise to the company secretary Deirdre Corcoran after he appeared naked at the entrance to her bedroom three times in one night during a working visit to Mozambique.

In May this year Mr Kinsella, 67, and other directors of Kenmare were visiting the company’s mine at Moma.

On the night of May 8, Mr Kinsella and the others had dinner at which alcohol was served. Later in the evening he went to bed and was sleeping naked. He subsequently appeared at Ms Corcoran’s bedroom door in the early hours, though he has no memory of doing so, and appeared on two other occasions in the space of three hours. Mr Kinsella says he has been a sleepwalker all his life.

Ms Corcoran made a complaint to the company and an investigation was carried out by solicitors O’Donnell Sweeney Eversheds. The report accepted that Mr Kinsella had been sleepwalking.

Ms Corcoran told Kenmare that she could not work on a one-to-one basis with Mr Kinsella in his role as chairman of the company’s audit committee. Kenmare’s chairman Charles Carvill asked Mr Kinsella to step down from the audit committee but to remain in his other positions, including deputy chairman.

Mr Kinsella said yesterday that he did not want to resign the position as he had done nothing wrong.

In July an emergency board meeting was held which voted to remove Mr Kinsella from the chair of the audit committee.

Following his removal he began legal proceedings against the company and is seeking “substantial” damages.

Mr Carvill said yesterday’s extraordinary general meeting to remove Mr Kinsella was being held because the board found it impossible to deal with him in recent months.

But Mr Kinsella said other motives lay behind the move and he claimed that the company had humiliated him and subjected his family to “ridicule” by making the matter public in July.

Kenmare managing director Michael Carvill said Mr Kinsella had behaved “irresponsibly” by not wearing pyjamas.

The vote by shareholders in favour of removing Mr Kinsella was passed by 99.45% to 0.55%.