Doubling up with CDS and King Island in one day
January 14, 2008
This Christopher Webb column item in The Age on November 23, 2000, coverered the CDS Technologies and King Island Cheese AGMs which we asked questions at.
What was Robert Cecil Mansfield doing holed up in a Mornington industrial estate yesterday?
The Telstra and McDonald's heavy was making his inaugural appearance at the annual meeting of CDS Technologies since being appointed chairman in 1996.
Now, where there's one heavy there's usually another close by, and that personage was Andrew Kroger, who effectively controls the water treatment outfit along with his good mate James Douglas Packer.
Packer junior sent his apologies, or in the words of a straight-faced Mansfield, "He rang me yesterday to say he wouldn't be able to make it."
For those not familiar with it, CDS is a low-profile outfit, which has been developing an unblockable unit that contains a patented wire-mesh screen designed to filter solids from running storm water.
CDS has been plugging away with the device for some years, and Mansfield declared yesterday that the board was acutely aware the company had not made a cent, preferring instead to spend money on development.
However, he said, 'you can't go on forever not making profits" and he told a shareholder, "we could have cut back the losses but you'd be throttling the potential of this company".
He said that CDS would lose a further $2-$3 million in the current year, but he was optimistic the American market, which the company was trying hard to crack, would yield profits from early next year.
Mansfield also had to contend with serial annual meeting flea Stephen Mayne, the bloke who got 122.5 million votes in his quest to get on the Woolworths board this week.
Mayne asked, "How on earth could he (James Packer) pursue his duties here?"
Mansfield told him that young Packer participated in directors' telephone conferences.
Andrew Kroger then revealed to the meeting that old man Packer had attended one CDS board meeting in Sydney.
"Kerry Packer was at the meeting as well as James (so we got) double the value for our money," he told an audience that included stockbrokers Robert Derham and George Simon.
Meanwhile, Andrew Kroger - an old McIntosh Hamson stockbroking hand - would not have been out of place later in the day at the Port Melbourne Yacht Club.
The club made a delightful setting for the annual meeting of The King Island Company, the cheese and smoked salmon outfit chaired by Raymond Charles King.
Compared with McPherson's - his other public company chairmanship - which always seems to have a problem, King Island must seem like a dream.
"Clearly, in a dynamic market place nothing can ever be taken for granted, but currently King Island has a rare if not unique set of treasures," was how Raymond waxed lyrical yesterday.
In case anyone was in any doubt, he told the audience the company had won a US championship for one of its blues and "as far as we're concerned we produce the best cheese in the world".
This was a meeting that looked like an old (mostly McIntosh) stockbroker's club.
Sitting on the King Island board were such veterans as Billy J. Conn and Thomas George Klinger.
In the audience were folk such as Bruce Kenneth Parncutt, Peter Gray and Peter Griffin.
New stockbroking blood came from The House of Were - underwriters to King Island - which fielded analysts Maree Henwood and Lou Capparelli.
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