Alumina board tilt to expose the overpaid lunch club
January 9, 2008
Dear Mayne Report subscribers and no extras,
greetings for the first time in 2008 and I hope you all had a lovely holiday break. We spent seven days with the family down at Phillip Island and enjoyed it full well.
And speaking of the family, our eldest, six year old Laura Mayne, has made her debut appearance in this opening 2008 Mayne Report video about The AFR's brazen stock tipping efforts last Saturday.
I'm going to hold The AFR accountable for spruiking 20 largely speculative stocks on its front page and have busily bought $500 worth of shares in 15 of them during this week's market downturn, lifting the portfolio to about 530 different shares.
I've been having some interesting exchanges with ANZ Bank chief economist Saul Eslake about these stories on Monday and Wednesday in Crikey this week covering Peter Costello, free speech and bank bashing. It's pretty clear that Costello had a real glass jaw and let's hope other people speak up about his monstering tactics now that he's largely out of the picture.
There isn't much happening in the world of shareholder activism but in tonight's brief edition, I thought it best to reveal the first board tilt planned for 2008.
Click below to read all about it and I'll have a more detailed update for you on Friday.
Do ya best, Stephen Mayne
greetings for the first time in 2008 and I hope you all had a lovely holiday break. We spent seven days with the family down at Phillip Island and enjoyed it full well.
And speaking of the family, our eldest, six year old Laura Mayne, has made her debut appearance in this opening 2008 Mayne Report video about The AFR's brazen stock tipping efforts last Saturday.
I'm going to hold The AFR accountable for spruiking 20 largely speculative stocks on its front page and have busily bought $500 worth of shares in 15 of them during this week's market downturn, lifting the portfolio to about 530 different shares.
I've been having some interesting exchanges with ANZ Bank chief economist Saul Eslake about these stories on Monday and Wednesday in Crikey this week covering Peter Costello, free speech and bank bashing. It's pretty clear that Costello had a real glass jaw and let's hope other people speak up about his monstering tactics now that he's largely out of the picture.
There isn't much happening in the world of shareholder activism but in tonight's brief edition, I thought it best to reveal the first board tilt planned for 2008.
Click below to read all about it and I'll have a more detailed update for you on Friday.
Do ya best, Stephen Mayne
Running for the Alumina board in 2008
I've decided the only listed company board tilt in the forthcoming mini-AGM season for companies with December 31 balance dates, will be the giant but tiny aluminium and bauxite company Alumina Ltd.
Having attended four of the five Alumina AGMs since it was spun out of WMC in 2003, it is now time to take the campaign to a new level.
You can only keep on turning up for so long to bag the six directors for running this post office box company with 10 staff that doesn't do anything like an overpaid lunch club. It is time to give shareholders a real alternative, especially given the remuneration report copped a 42% protest vote last year.
The change of government is also relevent because Alumina is Australia's largest electricity consumer through its minority, non-operating stake in the AWAC joint venture with Alcoa but the board is full of climate change sceptics who have only just got around to producing their first sustainability report.
We've spent much of this week knocking our AGM archive into shape on the site, so I can now point you to the accounts of the Alumina exchanges in 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007.
The register is wide open and directors like Mark Rayner just should not be hanging around like a bad smell when you consider the mess that he created as chairman of NAB, Pasminco and Mayne Nickless.
Alumina needs three directors sharing about $150,000, not the current old boys crews who are sharing more than $500,000 for doing not much.
As usual, it will all come down to the proxy advisers so I'll be making representations to those kingmakers at CGI Glass Lewis and Risk Metrics.
Weeding out overpaid and poorly performing directors is the last major frontier for shareholder activism in Australia and Alumina is carrying more than its fair share. It's time to apply the blowtorch.
Do ya best, Stephen Mayne
Having attended four of the five Alumina AGMs since it was spun out of WMC in 2003, it is now time to take the campaign to a new level.
You can only keep on turning up for so long to bag the six directors for running this post office box company with 10 staff that doesn't do anything like an overpaid lunch club. It is time to give shareholders a real alternative, especially given the remuneration report copped a 42% protest vote last year.
The change of government is also relevent because Alumina is Australia's largest electricity consumer through its minority, non-operating stake in the AWAC joint venture with Alcoa but the board is full of climate change sceptics who have only just got around to producing their first sustainability report.
We've spent much of this week knocking our AGM archive into shape on the site, so I can now point you to the accounts of the Alumina exchanges in 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007.
The register is wide open and directors like Mark Rayner just should not be hanging around like a bad smell when you consider the mess that he created as chairman of NAB, Pasminco and Mayne Nickless.
Alumina needs three directors sharing about $150,000, not the current old boys crews who are sharing more than $500,000 for doing not much.
As usual, it will all come down to the proxy advisers so I'll be making representations to those kingmakers at CGI Glass Lewis and Risk Metrics.
Weeding out overpaid and poorly performing directors is the last major frontier for shareholder activism in Australia and Alumina is carrying more than its fair share. It's time to apply the blowtorch.
Do ya best, Stephen Mayne