Massey shareholders to get report on UBB explosion at meeting

RICHMOND, Va. -– Massey Energy shareholders gathering for their annual meeting on May 18 can expect an initial report on the explosion that killed 29 miners at Upper Big Branch mine near Julian.

Company director Bobby Inman announced on May 4 that Richard Gabrys, former vice chairman of Deloitte and Touche accounting firm, would deliver the report.

Gabrys leads a committee that formed in August to answer inquiries from shareholders calling themselves Change to Win Investment Group.

Inman wrote to the group's executive director, William Patterson of Washington, that the committee would examine Massey's safety record and facts relating to the April 5 explosion.

"The board has great confidence in Mr. Gabrys," Inman wrote.

"His years of experience and insight will lead to the facts and provide a measured approach, without a rush to judgment about what happened," he wrote.

Inman, a retired Navy admiral from Texas, directed the National Security Agency and served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

After the bombing of Marine barracks and the U.S. embassy in Lebanon in 1983, he led a commission that set security design standards for embassies.

He was chairman and chief executive officer of two electronics firms, Westmark Systems and Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation.

He served as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and joined the boards of Dell Corporation and Southwestern Bell, now AT&T.

He teaches at the University of Texas, where he graduated in 1950, and twice he has filled in as interim dean.