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Rainbow stakes BC Graphite Prospects

Rainbow Resources Inc (TSXV:RBW) announced May 17 acquisition of graphite prospects in southwest BC. The company has staked two claim blocks covering over 40 square kilometres west and southwest of its flagship Big Strike Gold-Silver Project in the Slocan Mining District. The 2,100-hectare Claim Block #1 lies immediately north of Anglo Swiss Resources’ (TSXV:ASW) Blu Starr Graphite Property and 14 kilometres from Eagle Graphite’s mine, one of North America’s two flake-graphite producers. The 2,100-hectare Claim Block #2 is contiguous to Blu Starr’s southern boundary.

Rainbow holds historic airborne survey information for its graphite claims, which the company has begun prospecting. Rainbow also plans to drill Big Strike’s Gold Viking area.

Arrowhead finds Quebec Graphite Mineralization

Arrowhead Gold Corp (TSXV:AWH) announced May 17 a graphite find on its Gateau Property in the Chibougamau Mining District of north-central Quebec. A review of drilling completed in 2008 found one hole with 48 metres of coarse-grained graphite mineralization. The graphite horizon is within a basalt unit just below a contact with a quartzite unit, the company stated. A 2011 airborne survey outlined a 7.5-kilometre-long east-west electromagnetic conductor that coincides with and appears to be caused by the graphite horizon. The survey found up to five other conductive horizons that may also be related to graphite mineralization. The 2008 drilling was intended to test a uranium target so carbon content wasn’t measured at the time. The core is still on the property.

Arrowhead plans to have a crew re-examine the graphite horizon and prospect the EM conductors for graphite. The 3,975-hectare Gateau Property is approximately 240 kilometres northeast of the town of Chibougamau.

Uranium North reports Nunavut Graphite Samples up to 4.13% C

Uranium North Resource Corp (TSXV:UNR) announced May 16 graphite sample results from its Amer Lake Property in Nunavut. Six randomly chosen samples from two drill holes showed assays of 4.13%, 3.2%, 3.84%, 0.6%, 3.22% and 3.77% carbon. The two holes, 3.1 kilometres apart, and a third hole 15 kilometres east, intersected graphitic beds that have been identified in three outcrops spanning an area 22 by 10 kilometres. The samples will undergo mineral liberation analysis to determine the nature and particle size of the graphite. Uranium North has staked additional claims over areas with outcropping graphitic rocks.

The project has an inferred uranium resource estimate of 19.3 million pounds grading 0.04% triuranium octoxide (U3O8) using the industry-standard cutoff of 0.01%. The project is 70 kilometres from an all-season road linking Agnico-Eagle’s (TSX:AEM) Meadowbank Gold Mine with the town of Baker Lake.

Lomiko expands Quebec Graphite Property

Lomiko Metals Inc (TSXV:LMR) announced May 14 a letter of agreement to acquire a 100% interest in the Quatre Milles West Property in south Quebec. Under the agreement, Lomiko pays Zimtu Capital Corp (TSXV:ZC) and two other vendors a total of $3,000 and 1.8 million shares. The vendors retain a 2% NSR, half of which Lomiko may buy for $1 million.

The 2,180-hectare property covers the western extension of the geology that hosts the graphite-bearing structures shown in historic drilling at the company’s Quatre Milles Property. The combined property expands Quatre Milles from approximately 1,600 hectares to 3,780 hectares. Lomiko’s exploration program for the Quatre Milles Property includes mapping, prospecting and drilling to test and confirm historic high-grade graphite found by Graphicor Resources in a 26-hole, 1,625-metre drill program.

Read an interview with Lomiko CEO Paul Gill.

Read a feature story about Lomiko Metals.

Zenyatta updates Ontario Graphite Drilling

Zenyatta Ventures Ltd (TSXV:ZEN) announced May 14 a drilling update for its Albany Graphite Deposit in north Ontario. A stepout hole 450 metres east of the original discovery hole intersected 94 metres of near-surface graphitic breccia. A second hole collared from the same location but drilled in the opposite direction intersected 14.8 metres of graphitic veining and breccia followed by 108.2 metres of graphitic overprinting. Assays for the first hole are pending. The second hole will be redrilled due to mechanical problems with the rig. The company is currently drilling the first of two additional holes.

The graphite discovery is 30 kilometres from the Trans-Canada Highway, a powerline and a natural gas pipeline, 70 kilometres from rail and about five kilometres from an all-weather road. The deposit is near surface, underneath glacial till overburden.

Read a feature story about Zenyatta Ventures.

Northern Graphite announces Agreements for Ontario Spherical Graphite Tests

Northern Graphite Corp (TSXV:NGC) announced May 14 two agreements for further tests to manufacture spherical graphite from its Bissett Creek Deposit in east Ontario. The company has engaged Hazen Research and the National Research Council Canada to continue testing and optimizing Northern’s process for manufacturing spherical graphite, which is used to make the anodes in lithium-ion batteries. The company has already developed a proprietary manufacturing process. Hazen Research will confirm lab results using bench-scale models of commercial purification equipment for the full-scale process. This program will likely be followed by pilot plant testing, engineering and design work to define the capital and operating costs of a commercial facility.

The NRC will test Northern’s spherical graphite in lithium-graphite batteries to optimize and customize its performance to meet the specifications of potential offtake customers and strategic partners. Bissett Creek is a high-purity, large-flake, scalable deposit close to infrastructure. Northern plans to complete a bankable feasibility study in 2Q 2012, followed by permitting. Subject to feasibility results and financing, mine construction could then begin.

Read a feature story about Northern Graphite.

Logan acquires Quebec Graphite Property

Logan Copper Inc (TSXV:LC) announced May 14 acquisition of the Carheil Graphite Property in northwest Quebec. The 2,185-hectare property was staked on the Gestim website of Ressources naturelles et Faune Québec. During the 1970s Noranda Exploration undertook geophysics and drilling on 145 hectares of the property.

The project is approximately 280 kilometres northwest of Val-d’Or. Other Quebec projects of the same name include Standard Graphite’s (TSXV:SGH) Carheil Project in the Labrador Trough of northeast Quebec and NQ Exploration’s (TSXV:NQE) silver-polymetallic project in the northern Abitibi region.

Disclaimer: Lomiko Metals Inc, Standard Graphite Corp and Zimtu Capital Corp are clients of OnPage Media and the principals of OnPage Media may hold shares in those companies.

Read previous Graphite Digests here

Read more articles like this at resourceclips.com.

All information on this website is: (a) for informational purposes only; (b) not to be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or an endorsement, recommendation, investment advice or sponsorship of any entity or security; and (c) not necessarily reflective of the views or policy of the Financial Post. Prior to making any investment decision, it is strongly recommended that you seek advice from a qualified investment advisor. The Financial Post does not provide or guarantee any financial, legal, tax or accounting advice or advice regarding the suitability, profitability, or potential value of any particular investment, security or information source, especially as it relates to mining companies. For further details, please Section 22 of http://www2.canada.com/aboutus/termsofservice.html.

The Graphite Digest — A roundup of recent news from graphite explorers

The Importance Of Floridas Bankruptcy Procedure Exemption Laws

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While the G-8 leaders are schmoozing with President Obama during their slumber party at Camp David, and while the parallel NATO summit and its protests and rallies are wreaking havoc on the streets in Chicago, Europe is re-descending into rumor hell—where good rumors, as we found out last summer and fall, are head fakes that cause huge rallies in the markets, and where bad rumors, though passionately denied by all sides, turn out to be true.

The latest was that the European Central Bank and European Commission were preparing contingency plans for Greece’s exit from the Eurozone. Actually, it wasn’t even a rumor. EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht declared it during an interview: “A year and a half ago, there may have been the danger of a domino effect,” he said, “but today there are, both within the European Central Bank and the European Commission, services that are working on emergency scenarios in case Greece doesn't make it.”

A momentous statement. The first time ever that an EU official admitted the existence of contingency plans—though everyone had long assumed that they existed. Clearly, Europe’s political power brokers, disparate as they are, have gotten tired of bending to Greece’s wily political elite and their threats. Read.... The Greek Extortion Racket in its Final Spasm.

Alas, within hours, the very European Commission where De Gucht serves as the Trade Commissioner stabbed him in the back: “We completely deny that we are working on any such emergency plans,” said a spokesperson for the Commission. “We are concentrating all our efforts on supporting Greece and keeping it in the Eurozone. That is the scenario we are working on.”

Indeed. And then there was the rumor about printing money. Not the kind that the Fed, the ECB, and other central banks are printing, but real money. De La Rue, a British company that prints currency for 150 countries, among other business activities, has apparently been asked some time ago to prepare contingency plans for printing Greek drachma notes, according to unconfirmed rumors that just surfaced. People who got wind of it earlier have driven up the stock (DLAR.L) 11% since mid-April—possibly a confirmation.

Greece’s return to the drachma can’t be done overnight. It would be a complex and costly transition that would require time. The day Greece switches to the drachma, it will have to have huge quantities of drachma notes on hand; and preparations are apparently underway to print them. The Bank of Greece has its own printing outfit that has been printing euros ever since it stopped printing drachmas. It would pick up much of the volume, but any demand beyond its capacity would have to be farmed out to other printers. Hence De La Rue.

Banks have already been preparing for the drachma. Turns out, some banks never actually removed their drachma capabilities, perhaps because they lacked confidence in Greece’s ability to keep the euro, or perhaps because they—the banks, not the Greeks—were simply too lazy. And they’d be able to switch from one moment to the next. But it would still be a complicated mess laced with capital controls and all the banking nightmares associated with them. It would be fraught with risks, legal issues, and uncertainties.

A return to the drachma—and its rapid devaluation—would, however, do wonders for Greece's tourism industry, the second largest industry after shipping. In 2011, the number of international visitors actually rose by 9.5% from the prior year, and they spent 9.3% more. The industry is hugely important to Greece: it provides 18.4% of the country’s jobs and makes up 16.5% of the economy.

But now reservations for the summer have collapsed by a stunning 50%! "Political instability," explains Georgios Drakopoulos Director General of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE). And bad publicity, strikes, demonstrations, and images of Athens on fire—the only things foreign media showed, Drakopoulos lamented, though in the rest of Greece, “the conditions are the exact opposite.” And once those issues disappear from the media, a devalued drachma would turn Greece into an irresistible and highly affordable paradise for tourists of all types, including waves of budget tourists—all of whom would bring in hard currency.

“The Greeks are still debt slaves, and will be until they tell Brussels to take a hike,” said David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan. With similarly pungent flourishes, he talked of a “paralyzed” Fed that is in its “final days,” hostage of Wall Street “robots” trading in markets that are “artificially medicated.” For his awesome interview, read.... The Emperor is Naked: David Stockman.

Rumors, Denials, and Visions of Chaos

Vicente Trius has a cumbersome challenge ahead of him as president of Loblaw Cos. Ltd. Brought aboard Canada’s biggest grocery chain just over a year ago and at the helm since taking over for British retailing dynamo Allan Leighton in August, Mr. Trius came in with a wealth of international retail experience behind him, including executive roles at retail chains Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Asia and Latin America and Carrefour S.A. in Europe.

The Spanish-born exec speaks about food with a passion lacking in his Loblaw’s predecessors, and his vision involves bringing the romance of food back to the multifaceted retailer, which also offers financial services, pharmacy, general merchandise such as household goods and electronics and Joe Fresh apparel.

“We are actually bringing in better products not only because they look good, but because they taste a lot better,” he said after the annual general meeting earlier in May.

That may be true, but Mr. Trius arrived in this country at a time of turbulence in grocery retail, with a shaky economy persuading consumers to be most loyal to those offering the best deals. At the same time, Wal-Mart has embarked on a dramatic grocery expansion ahead of Target’s arrival in Canada next year.

This year and next also mark the final — and most difficult — parts of a years-long supply chain and technology upgrade at Loblaw, a process that usually involves some hiccups and delays for large retailers.

As a result, Loblaw’s financial performance has been disappointing. First-quarter profit nose-dived 22.4% and earnings per share dropped 22.4% from a year ago to 45¢, missing analyst estimates of 49¢. Sales were up 0.9% to $6.9-billion, but, more worryingly, same-store sales fell 0.7%.

Analyst reactions ranged from cautious patience to outright indignation.

“After seven years of optimistic rhetoric from various management teams, investors can be forgiven for rolling their eyes at the latest pronouncements,” Perry Caicco of CIBC World Markets wrote in a note to investors, adding the bulk of the progress in the quarter was “verbal rather than financial.”

Mr. Caicco dropped his target price on Loblaw’s stock to $39 from $40. “Even if execution at Target and Wal-Mart is less than excellent, there will be big trouble on the grocery horizon,” he said. “Loblaw’s attitude toward all this new competition is ‘let them taste it,’ a quote which has probably been posted in the lunch rooms at Target and Wal-Mart.”

STIFF COMPETITION

Food sales in Canada are split between traditional grocery stores, convenience stores, smaller specialty boutiques, mass merchants such as Wal-Mart and larger warehouse players like Costco. While traditional grocers still accounted for most retail food sales in 2011, non-traditional players grew their share to about 37% last year from 33% in 2009, a report by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service said.

Loblaw is the biggest grocer with more than 1,000 stores and an estimated 20% market share in food, while Empire Co. (owner of Sobeys) follows at 13% and Metro Inc. at 9%. Other strong regional players include Overwaitea and Safeway in western Canada and Longo’s in Toronto.

The biggest market share thief by far is Wal-Mart, which has rapidly expanded its food footprint and this year is embarking on its biggest expansion plan since arriving in Canada in 1994.

Grocery is a crucial part of the retailer’s strategy because it brings in extra and more regular customer traffic, and accordingly boosts its general merchandise sales. Of the company’s 333 Canadian stores, 167 now have a grocery store inside them and the company is tackling 73 building projects this year, 43 of which will be grocery Supercentres.

While Wal-Mart Canada’s share of the country’s grocery receipts is only 6%, the USDA report said, its food sales have soared to $5.2-billion in 2011 from $130-million in 2006. Its buildout comes in advance of the opening of 125 to 135 Target stores in Canada next year. While Target will carry frozen food, dairy and packaged goods supplied by Sobeys, it has not announced plans to expand into the fresh food business.

SAME-STORE SALES STAGNATING

Same-store sales is a metric measuring performance at retail locations open for more than a year, and is frequently cited as a key performance indicator. Loblaw’s same-store sales have been hit in recent years because of poor performance in its general merchandise offerings. The company has been exiting unproductive retail categories and trying to improve its general merchandise business with a more compelling home assortment and store upgrades.

“Even the tiniest indication that there is something positive going on at the core retail operations… could boost the share price quickly and meaningfully,” Mr. Caicco said.

Mark Rosen of Accountability Research Corp. noted Loblaw has not posted annual same-store sales growth above 1% since 2009. And Loblaw’s efforts to stay competitive on price by offering promotions ate into its core food business sales in the first quarter.

Mr. Rosen, who earlier this week put a sell on Loblaw’s stock and a target price of $30, said Loblaw failed to take full advantage of a national food inflation average of 3.7% in the quarter.

Keith Howlett of Desjardins Securities, who rates the shares as a hold and recently cut his target price to $35 from $38, had forecast a same-store sales rise of 0.8% and called the decline of 0.7% “worrisome.”

But analyst David Hartley of Credit Suisse took another view in a research report Thursday, believing the market has applied too much of a discount to Loblaw’s shares. Loblaw has a trading range of between -0.5 times to 0.8 times estimated 2012 earnings, a 32% discount by his research. By comparison, “pure-play” grocer Metro Inc., which doesn’t offer clothing, general merchandise or financial services, currently trades at 11.3 times earnings.

Mr. Hartley said the market should pay more attention to the value of Joe Fresh, which market research firm NPD said is now the biggest clothing brand by sales in Canada.

“We think it’s possible that Joe’s sales are near management’s target of $1-billion,” Mr. Hartley said.

IT UPGRADE

Loblaw is spending $70-million this year on the final phase of an IT upgrade and $40-million to improve customer service. The IT upgrade, expected to roll out fully next year, is the culmination of a vast turnaround program the retailer began in 2007. Initially, it was a three-to-five year plan involving the integration of the company’s disparate systems onto SAP, but it will be at least next year before it’s finished.

Calling 2012 “a challenging transitional year,” given the upgrades, Mr. Howlett said, “underlying operating improvement will be more than offset by further transformation expenditures for long-term prosperity.”

Mr. Rosen said the strategic initiatives are “testing the patience of the market given the immediate margin pressures, but delayed potential benefits.”

Analysts may be recalling the long and painful implementation of SAP at Sobeys, a project that began in 1996 but was put on hold in 2000 for four years because of problems with database integration. The project resumed in 2004 and was ultimately successful, but it was costly and the retailer’s share price was hammered in the process.

Loblaw’s business strategy needs some freshening up

Economic nuptials were supposed to end European political acrimony by binding the continent in common monetary cause. The many who objected to the union were ignored, their protests mere quibbles over the trivialities of a grand vision.

The flaws in the constitution of the European Monetary Union have since drawn markets to the realization that this marriage of nations is poisoned. But while two years of financial revolt have frayed solidarity, eurozone officialdom remains publicly committed to the currency union. Europe’s leaders, for the most part, insist the relationship is salvageable.

Mounting evidence suggests the contrary, says a vocal faction predicting the eventual dissolution of the eurozone. Their opponents say the economic and political consequences of that would be catastrophic. They may all be right.

The options available to the eurozone are quickly narrowing to two: “make up … or break up,” as British prime minister David Cameron laid it out this week.

“That is the choice they have to make and it is a choice they cannot long put off,” he said. “If the eurozone wants to continue as it is, then it has got to build a proper firewall, it’s got to take steps to secure the weakest members of the eurozone, or it’s going to have … go in a different direction.”

Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty laid out the same stark scenario. “They have to do the right thing, use some of their taxpayers’ money to bail out some of the weaker members of the eurozone — or start moving away from the eurozone and just say this was an experiment that has not worked,” he told CTV this week.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty holds a press conference in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday.

“The whole future of the eurozone is up for grabs,” Mr. Flaherty said.

Although Europe has managed to trod through the sovereign debt crisis for more than two years without firmly committing to either course, the time available for hesitancy is running thin.

“This way of framing the debate is probably the right one,” said Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London. “Without a shadow of a doubt we are approaching the denouement of the eurozone.”

Forces both financial and political are increasingly insistent on a definitive course.

Risk premiums on the sovereign bonds of indebted southern eurozone countries, particularly Spain, are again approaching critical levels.

Meanwhile, political crises threaten the fragile bailouts-for-austerity arrangements.

A new fiscal pact was meant to be the linchpin in the plan to repair the strained relationship among eurozone members. Once fiscal integration and budget oversight were in place, a commonly issued eurozone bond could restore stability to sovereign debt markets. Germany will not entertain the notion of euro bonds until a centralized fiscal regime is installed, said Jan Randolph, head of sovereign risk analysis at IHS Global Insight.

“There’s no budging on that. They will not use more of their financial resources until they’re sure there’s no more hazard of other governments abusing the German balance sheet,” he said.

Over the past six months, Germany has tested the capacity of the eurozone to commit to austerity and swallow the loss of budget sovereignty.

The results of the tests were not promising.

French voters ousted president Nicolas Sarkozy, installing Socialist party leader François Hollande with a mandate to revisit French austerity in favour of a recovery plan emphasizing economic growth.

REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol

France's new President Francois Hollande (C) shakes hands with supporters as he arrives for a traditional ceremony at Paris city hall on the day of his investiture in Paris May 15, 2012.

The man who may become Greece’s next prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, the 37-year-old head of the Coalition of the Radical Left, is giving representation to Greek discontent, calling for a renegotiation of its bailout package.

That kind of talk has eurozone leaders openly speculating on a Greek exit.

About time, said Jamie Dannhauser, senior economist at London-based Lombard Street Research. “It’s fairly clear they’ve chucked a lot of good money after bad here,” he said. “We’re getting to the point of no return, where this has got to be resolved in one way or another.”

However, there is a powerful deterrent to entertaining the possibility of a eurozone breakup: fear of the unknown. From the outset, fear has guided this crisis, Mr. Spiro said.

“Anybody who suggests a Greek exit from the eurozone can be semi-orderly is simply deluding themselves,” he said.

The European banking sector’s direct exposure to a Greek exit is largely known, and greatly reduced since the haircut that saw private bondholders write down their holdings of Greek bonds by about two-thirds in March.

Far more daunting are the effects of a Greek exit and hard default on confidence, Mr. Spiro said.

“What we’re not clear about is the extent to which Spanish and Italian bond markets would virtually collapse out of fear, out of a self-fulfilling panic,” he said.

“Would (markets) see it as a one off? Would they see it as a dangerous template for Portugal? Would they see it as a conduit to contagion in Italy in Spain? What would this do for the austerity drive? There are so many black swan-type possible events. These are uncharted waters.”

Avoiding the wrath of markets is perhaps the most persuasive argument for preserving the makeup of the eurozone.

The possible political implications of a collapse of the currency are also difficult to overstate. Leaders are understandably resistant to the prospect of re-exposing old political divisions.

“Outside of Europe, we all fail to grasp the depth of feeling about the euro. This is essentially a project they’ve been working on for 50, 60 years,” Mr. Dannhauser said. “A lot of this comes down to a very strong desire to keep this show on the road.”

With nationalistic and extremist factions gaining electoral momentum, and with 11 eurozone governments fallen in the last year, the currency union can hardly be declared a success in installing political stability, however.

“The irony is that the project was conceived to unite Europe and in fact has divided it,” said Sebastian Mallaby, director of geoeconomic studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But things can always get worse.”

Among the possible catalysts for a political fracturing is the exit of Greece from the euro.

While almost 80% of Greeks say they prefer to remain in the eurozone, their disgust with austerity, unemployment and recession could provoke a split from the currency bloc.

REUTERS/Yiorgos Karahalis

A health worker shouts slogans during an anti-austerity rally in Athens this past February.

Many argue that withdrawing from the euro is, in fact, in Greece’s own interest, holding up Argentina as the poster child for recovery post-default by way of currency devaluation.

“It’s a huge shock to the system. But Argentina bounced backed very quickly,” Mr. Dannhauser said.

But in Greece’s case, with little export capacity, a devalued drachma may not be such a potent remedy.

Greece also has a primary budget deficit, so even after defaulting on its obligations would face a fiscal gap it could not plug with financing after losing access to credit markets.

With little success to date in arriving at fiscal balance through austerity, the country may be forced to print money to close the gap.

“This will create hyperinflation, which will quickly eliminate the value of a devaluation,” Mr. Mallaby said. “Greece would find itself without a credible currency, a destroyed banking system and no added competitiveness.”

But even if neither Greece nor the eurozone actively chooses a Greek exit, a dissolution of the relationship may be unavoidable.

Mr. Tsipras, the hard-left leadership contender, insists on a new arrangement with the eurozone while expressing confidence that Europe would be unlikely to cut off funding should Greece fail to comply with its bailout conditions.

He’s wrong, Mr. Randolph said. “It’s not going to work,” he said. “If that is not accepted by the Greek government … financing will be severed and Greece will run out of money in July.”

Given the costs of an outright divorce, this could lead instead to a kind of estrangement, whereby euros still circulate in Greece, which would lose the benefits of membership in the currency union, Mr. Randolph said.

He cautions, however, against prematurely writing off the eurozone experiment as doomed to fail.

After all, he said, “it took America four attempts to create a dollar union.”

Why breaking up the eurozone could be painful

Montreal — In a tiny basement office in a grey stone building in central Montreal, Yves Michaud’s staff members are plotting their next shareholder insurrection.

It’s annual general meeting season and Mr. Michaud and his colleagues at the Mouvement d’éducation et de défense des actionnaires (Médac) have been busy doing what they’ve become known for: Getting in corporate Canada’s face with uncomfortable questions and lofty shareholder proposals in a bid for better accountability.

Earlier this week they showed up at the Power Corp. meeting wielding four investor recommendations, including one that would allow executives to exercise stock options only when their companies have achieved measurable objectives like higher earnings. Before that, they pestered Bombardier Inc., blasting the company for giving its executives pay increases while the stock languishes less than $4 per share.

At the National Bank of Canada shareholders meeting this year, Mr. Michaud, a former provincial politician and an ardent separatist who relishes language and appears to love to hear himself talk, was booed. But that’s really no surprise. This is a man who once lectured management at a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce AGM for more than an hour in a performance The Gazette in Montreal likened to “a Fidel Castro May Day address.” The bank’s then-chief executive Al Flood was forced to cancel his own speech to investors.

Lauded by some and loathed by others, Médac has become over the past 15 years one of the loudest voices for corporate governance nationwide and one of the biggest critics of excessive executive pay. The group founded by Mr. Michaud is little known outside Quebec. And yet, its message has rarely echoed more loudly than now.

It was Médac that won the legal right for retail investors to make proposals at AGMs. Long before Arthur Andersen LLP botched the auditing of Enron, it was Médac that got Canada’s banks to disclose the consulting fees they pay to their public accountants. And say on pay, Canada’s non-binding advisory vote that gives investors in banks and other companies a voice in executive compensation? Médac takes credit for that, too.

“Our paid members and our board members, I think, are militants,” says Fernand Daoust, Médac’s president. “I don’t like that word. But they are people who are absolutely scandalized by the liberty that current company leaders are taking on remuneration…. There is, among retail shareholders, a profound indifference toward these things. We’re trying to wake them up.”

Canada needs more investors who stake a public position against certain corporate abuses, says Michel Nadeau, executive director of Montreal’s Institute for Governance of Private and Public Organizations. “Anything that can help, any group that can help to make the voice of the shareholder heard, whether it be institutional or retail investors, I support that.”

Mr. Nadeau says he is disappointed that it took an American like Bill Ackman to clean house at Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., one of Canada’s oldest companies. He says Canadian investors failed in their duty to demand that previous management boost the railway’s performance.

Some shareholders have sought private meetings with companies to make their voice heard. Médac’s approach is the opposite: Buy the minimum shares required in a company to become an owner, research its perceived corporate governance weak spots, then confront the company publicly at its AGM while trying to woo as many shareholders onside as it can.

It doesn’t always work of course. The vast majority of the 58 shareholder proposals Médac has made since 1997 have been voted down. Perhaps the biggest unfulfilled item on its wish list is a requirement that all companies trading on stock exchanges disclose the median salary of their employees and to hold the so-called “fairness ratio” (the ratio of the top executive’s pay to the average employee salary) to a maximum of 30.

Still, there have been successes as well. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce shareholders overwhelmingly backed Mr. Michaud’s 1999 proposal that its directors must hold shares in the bank equal to six times the annual fee they’re paid for their services. The argument was that by watching over shareholder interests, directors would also be protecting their own interests.

Mr. Michaud is perhaps best known for controversial comments he made about the Jewish people during a radio interview in 2000 when he was seeking to become a Parti Québécois candidate in a by-election that year. The remarks earned him official condemnation from the legislature and were said to have contributed to Lucien Bouchard’s decision to resign as premier the following year.

So how did a committed separatist with a contentious past come to command so much air time at annual meetings, given his organization has only one paid employee and annual revenue from its 1,500 members that barely tops $50,000?

In two words: personal misfortune.

The moustachioed Mr. Michaud, 82, took to defending shareholders after he lost part of his retirement savings in the 1992 near-collapse of General Trustco of Canada Inc., which was later bought by National Bank of Canada. National, and other banks, have been among his top targets ever since.

Critics of Médac, who include some prominent business leaders, dismiss the group as a highly political organization driven by the bias of Mr. Michaud’s separatist convictions. Mr. Daoust is also an avowed sovereigntist, and former PQ premier Jacques Parizeau recently joined the Médac board.

Opponents point to Mr. Michaud’s legal efforts to obtain the financial statements of Power Corp. newspaper unit Gesca as evidence of his crusade. Power, controlled by the pro-Canada Desmarais family, has objected.

In his September 2009 ruling on the case, Quebec Appeal Court judge Pierre Dalphond noted: “Mr. Michaud wants to show that the ‘Desmarais empire’ financially supports Gesca to promote the federalist cause, which displeases this long-time separatist.”

For his part, Mr. Michaud sounds undeterred. Though he leaves much of the actual company meeting battles these days to other Médac members, he still commands the bluster of a determined activist.

Speaking in a brief interview this week, Mr. Michaud said bankers are more avaricious than ever, the financial world is full of “bandits,” and AGMs remain “parodies” of real shareholder democracy. “I’m sickened to the limit of my existence,” he said with his typical flair for the overdramatic.

Mr. Michaud said he wished there were more activists like him outside Quebec. Whether the country could handle another Yves Michaud is another question altogether.

Investor activist Yves Michaud fights what he sees as corporate abuses