Bad Bendigo, hostile EGMs, Mark Day, NAB, Asciano, James Gorman, Manningham, Woolies, pokies and Paladin
March 23, 2010
Dear Mayne Reporters,
what follows, including a just-published 2000-word column for Fairfax, is perhaps our most comprehensive offering yet as we settle in to hear President's Obama's lecture to Wall Street in five minutes time.
Enjoy!
Latest column for Fairfax websites and Business View
Fairfax Media's www.businessday.com.au has just gone live with our latest column which slices and dices various capital raising structures whilst skewering Bendigo & Adelaide Bank for coming up with one of the most poorly structured deals of the year.
There's plenty of lively arguments put out there so do check it out if you get a chance.
Last Friday we also spent an hour on Sky's Business View program and the videos have been edited down on this special playlist, although apologies if any of them wobble on your computers. NAB have certainly copped it again for their retail shareholder shafting, so much so that even host Helen Dalley intimated it was argued a little too forcefully.
A sudden deluge of hostile EGMs
The Mayne Report has long-complained about the lack of a culture of shareholder pressure in Australia, so at one level it is good to see a sudden unprecedented out-break of hostile EGMs from aggrieved minority shareholders.
Indeed, our list of hostile EGMs or resolutions over the past 20 years has now reached 26, with the following 6 additions over the past three months alone:
Amadeus Energy: listed investment firm CVC and two other shareholders called an EGM in August 2009 to remove directors and defeat a dilutive selective share placement but then reached this accommodation with board seats and a share purchase plan for retail investors.
Multiplex Prime Property Fund: greenmailer Nicholas Bolton has called an EGM for October 7 proposing the manager be removed and the partly paid fund be wound up. The directors have added their own resolutions re-appointing Brookfield and approving a 178-for-1 capital raising at 0.1c to raise $50 million and massively dilute Bolton's 19% stake given he doesn't have the $10 million required to avoid dilution.
Premium Investors: Dixon Advisory went in with the jackboots proposing to remove all directors in June 2008 and appoint four of their own whilst also conducting a massive buy-back. This truce was reached in July where the requisition was withdrawn in exchange for three capital management resolutions being put to shareholders which were all comfortably approved.
Redflex: a selective and discounted placement announced on September 10 sparked this EGM requisition on September 11 from the Pratt family, Hunter Hall and Renaisance to remove three directors, including the chairman, and replace them with three new candidates.
RHG: Steve Johnson and Greg Hoffman from The Intelligent Investor have called an EGM nominating themselves to the board of the old RAMS Home Loan business and proposing to remove David Coe as a director. They've set up a special website prosecuting their case complete with 1800 number.
VanEyk Three Pillars: Dixon Advisory called an EGM in August 2009 to sack the entire board and replace them with their own people. Also proposed a 25% buy-back.
These six corporate actions hone in on two of the biggest issues in the market right now: selective placements and investment companies trading at discounts to claimed net assets.
Dixon Advisory is right to focus on LICs trading at discounts but their tactics have been a bit thuggish with minimal engagement before the requisition to remove all directors. And the targets haven't exactly been the worst offenders. An outfit like VanEyk Three Pillars actually has good governance and trades at only a modest discount.
The Redflex action looks well based because the board was proposing a selective discounted placement when it previously had refused to countenance takeover offers at much higher prices, as Mark Hawthorne explained in this excellent piece for www.businessday.com.au.
The Redflex stoush even made this US publication given the Melbourne-based company is one of the biggest speed camera operators in the US, which makes sense given Victoria runs the world's most officious and lucrative traffic regulation and fines regime.
Morgan Stanley still less valuable than our Big Four cartel members
Melbourne-boy James Gorman received a truck-load of publicity over the weekend after rising to the very top at Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street giant which went close to going under in the wake of the Lehman Bros collapse but is now capitalised at $US40 billion.
Whilst Morgan Stanley shares have tripled to almost $US30 from their lows last year, it is sobering to note that all of the Australian Big Four are worth more than this so-called global power house.
Indeed, The Weekend Australian's top 150 list in Saturday's paper listed the market capitalisation rankings as follows:
1. BHP-Billiton: $128.5 billion (excludes PLC shares but ASX still won't fix this error every week)
2. Westpac: $74.1 billion
3. CBA: $73.7 billion
4. NAB: $62.3 billion
5. ANZ: $57.9 billion
That said, Gorman is running a far more complex and competitive global operation than the relatively easy job of being part of the Australian banking cartel, which has seen the Big Four hit a combined market capitalisation of $267 billion courtesy of their strategy of gouging consumers with the world's most expensive financial services.
Where does James Gorman rank in the Aussie expat list?
The Mayne Report, even going back to Crikey days, has long tracked the success of expat Australians in business and the ascension of James Gorman at Morgan Stanley is clearly an unprecedented event.
Whilst former Australian diplomat and Lend Lease chairman Jill Ker-Conway was a long-serving non-executive director of Merrill Lynch, no Australian has even been CEO of a Wall Street major.
Tony Burgess, now back in Melbourne running a boutique advisory business, was for a while Deusche Bank's global co-head of mergers and acquisitions out of its London office and Rob Rankin has recently been appointed to run Deutsche Bank's Asia Pacific operations. Before that we had Ahmed Fahour sitting on the Citigroup executive committee up until 2003.
Australia has a dreadful record when it comes to producing global companies in fast moving consumer goods, but we're the world's best at producing CEOs of FMCG companies. Look no further than Douglas Daft at Coke, the late Charlie Bell at McDonalds, Paul Johnson at Campbell Soup, Geoffrey Bible at Philip Morris and Philip Bowman at Allied Domecq.
However, the only problem with the above list is that they are all "former CEOs". The only incumbent we've got is Kellogg's CEO David Mackay, although he was born in New Zealand.
It's an interesting debate and do check out our list tracking the past and current Australian success stories in global business.
For mine, Gorman is about to become the second most credentialled Australian offshore after Andrew Liveris, the CEO of Dow Chemical, although it is only capitalised at $US27 billion. However, even the Liveris record has been tainted somewhat by his position on the Citigroup board when it basically went broke and had to be bailed out.
We shouldn't ignore Rupert Murdoch and Frank Lowy in this debate, but they are founder entrepeneurs rather than professional CEOs. Rupert has taken News Corp to the US and it's shares have recovered in recent months to the point where it is now capitalised at $37 billion. Frank Lowy still lives in Sydney but Westfield is the world's biggest shopping centre company and Frank remains the largest shareholder with about 8% of something worth $30 billion.
Mark Day lets fly at Crikey
The Australian's veteran media commentator Mark Day let fly at Crikey yesterday in this feisty column which was heavily promoted off page one. The comments at the bottom of the column are running heavily in Crikey's favour, which is a credit to The Australian's gate-keepers for letting them through.
Day has consistently covered Crikey over the past decade, with a range of bouquets and brickbats. The brickbats most often follow some Crikey attack on the Murdoch interests and so it was this time when he objected to Crikey raising a Press Council complaint about The Sunday Telegraph's bogus Pauline Hanson photos.
Crikey these days is sometimes a little self-conscious when it comes to criticisms but it was good to see they responded yesterday. Richard Farmer included the Day piece in his breakfast media wrap and the Crikey media blog run by Margaret Simons also returned to the fray in the email edition, although it is unfortunately behind the subscription gate.
The Simons defence was okay but didn't really deal with some of the criticism. For instance, Day rightly complained that Crikey too often almost celebrates the demise of newspapers. And so it was yesterday when the Crikey editorial sneered at The SMH for winning the PANPA newspaper of the year award when it's profits were declining.
Crikey is at its best when it is fearlessly critiquing all players in the media, but sometimes the commercial imperative of the broader stable within which it is housed - all internet-centric plays focused on competing primarily with Fairfax - tends to skew the coverage. For instance, Fairfax launched its opinion aggregation site www.nationaltimes.com.au yesterday which will steal substantial traffic share off its competitors, including Crikey.
Yet there wasn't anything in the Crikey Daily email yesterday critiqueing the new offering which included an interesting column by Malcolm Turnbull on print vs internet journalist and a somewhat more predictable effort from Kevin Rudd.
We're all into anonymous contributions now - except News Ltd
It was interesting that National Times has introduced an anonymous daily contribution to be known as The Goanna. It seems more and more media outlets are cottoning on to the advantages of running anonymous material. Back in the early Crikey days, this was one of the biggest criticisms levelled against us. We were regularly sneered at for poor journalistic practices but when you consider The Weekend Fin's Prince column, Heckler in The Sunday Age, The Rumour File on 3AW, The Goanna and the large anonymous gossip section in modern day Crikey called "tips and rumours", it seems everyone is getting in on the anonymous act.
Funnily enough, it seems that the Fairfax stable is these days far more into anonymous contributions than News Ltd, although Fairfax has been very slow to embrace reader comments, something which does feature on National Times.
Indeed, it was someone at Fairfax who was once caught anonymously tampering with Crikey's wikipedia entry. At least with News Ltd they stand up and launch their attacks loud and proud.
The Murdoch stable have certainly launched the biggest attacks on Crikey over the years and Day's spray yesterday was just the latest. Check out a few earlier pastings in this piece from 2006 when Piers Akerman was taken to the Press Council after he claimed Crikey wasn't run or owned by real journalists.
Mark Day's only comparable attack to yesterday's effort was after the 2005 News Corp AGM in New York when he found this special edition of Crikey particularly objectionable. Check out this Crikey piece which wraps up both sides of the argument.
The most famous of these News Ltd counter-attacks was Terry McCrann's remarkable 6000-word spray in July 2004, but who can forget Andrew Bolt's storming of the ABC radio studios in 2005. Have a listen.
It's a much more peaceful life these days focusing on corporate governance and life as a councillor at the City of Manningham.
Manningham endorsed Aldi proposal, funds second tram study, quits Family Day Care
Speaking of Manningham, the edited audio highlights from the most recent public council meetings are available here.
The August 25 meeting was an interesting affair. Have a listen to the edited audio from four of the debates:
Endorsing the Doncaster Hill Smart Energy Zone Development
Endorsing Aldi proposal to replace axed Woolies supermarket at Jackson Court
Withdrawing from Family Day Care service with a heavy heart
Speaking in favour of second study into the tram extension to Doncaster
Backing the state government's new special activity zone for Doncaster Hill
Asciano calls in the heavies, but lame duck chairs stays too long
Corporate Melbourne is currently suffering from a shortage of credible professional directors who can step up and chair ASX100 companies. I was lamenting this very problem with a major shareholder in Asciano three weeks ago and as we kicked around names of people who could replace Tim Poole as Asciano. I did mention former North Ltd and Orica CEO Malcolm Broomhead but still thought he had health problems.
Lo and behold, Broomhead was announced as the new chairman two weeks ago and Asciano finally got itself a more regular board with Sydney-based Geoff Kleeman and former ANZ heavy Bob Edgar joining as part of a new broom, so to speak.
It was always a very strange decision to appoint Tim Poole chairman when he'd only ever been an underling to Mike Fitzpatrick sitting on some of the Hastings infrastructure boards. The Australian's John Durie neatly explained the history in a good column last week and Poole does deserve credit for voluntarily departing.
Poole will chair the Asciano AGM on October 23 and then immediately step down which is an unfortunate habit amongst major public companies. Surely shareholders should hear from whoever is taking the company forward rather than the old guard, especially when the record has been ordinary and the departure forced.
The same thing happened at ASX last year when Maurice Newman gave an appalling speech blasting the press and then promptly handed over to David Gonski at the end of the AGM.
ASX shareholders will finally get to hear from Gonski at this year's AGM in Sydney on September 30 and my flights have been booked for months.
Shock, horror - donation received at The Mayne Report
We've dropped about $200,000 on The Mayne Report over the past two years but everything has turned around since February this year when we resolved to move to a free model and then stumbled upon the strategy of focusing on capital raising plays to pay the bills.
The gross gains from these plays this year now exceeds $214,000 although when you combine that with more than $100,000 of crystallised capital losses putting together the world's biggest small share portfolio, we're still facing a net loss from the whole exercise.
However, the capital raising plays are showing no signs of slowing down and if it keeps producing profits of about $30,000 a month The Mayne Report will be able to continue as a free service into the future.
That said, it was very nice to last week receive our first donation since ditching paid subscriptions four months ago. It was only $50 but if anyone else wishes to help fund our activism and this free service, feel free to do likewise by clicking here.
The latest capital raising plays
Since the last edition we've crystallised three solid capital raising gains and copped a savage scale back from Virgin Blue. Here is the detail:
September 8
Whitehaven Coal: $15,000 into SPP at $3.05 and exited for $3.45 to make a profit of $1976.
September 9
Intermoco: $10,000 into $15,000 SPP at 1.5c and exited at 1.7c to make gross profit of $1333.
September 10
Virgin Blue: $23,000 into two 20c entitlement offers with unlimited ability to apply for extras but with just 130 shares held by the wife and I, was scaled back to just $47.80 worth of shares and a paper gain of about $35. Still waiting for refund.
September 14
Structural Systems: $15,000 into SPP at 78c which was scaled back by 24% or $3600. Exited at 85c for a profit of $1040.
Offers we're currently committed to
And here is the detail of bets we've currently placed:
Amcor: $25,000 into two entitlement offers at $4.30 which closed on September 10 and trades September 21.
Bank of Queensland: $8000 into entitlement offer at $10 which closed September 14 and trades September 22.
Bendigo & Adelaide Bank: $30,000 into two entitlement offers at $6.75 which trades September 17. Scaled back to $13,500.
Energy & Minerals Australia: $15,000 into two entitlements to $15,000 SPP at 21c which closed on September 9 and trades on September 23.
Goodman Group: $20,000 into two 1-for-1 entitlement offers at 40c which trades September 17.
Hills Industries: $5000 into SPP which closed September 11 and trades after September 15.
Sedgman: $10,000 into SPP at $1.30 which closes September 15 and trades September 22.
Skilled Engineering: $15,000 into SPP at $1.50 which closes September 18 and trades September 28.
Spotless: $4000 so far into $15,000 SPP at $2.16 or 2.5% discount. Closes September 17.
That represent total applications of $107,000 with refunds of $22,952 from Virgin Blue, $16,500 from Bendigo Bank and $3600 from Structural Systems due. This means the total funds committed as of now is $145,052 and there remains a big very pipeline of offers.
Check out this complete chronological list of all capital raising plays in 2009 and at the bottom is a list of the 30 or so upcoming offers.
There's also this version ranking the top 55-plus plays since January. And for the latest shuffles in our ridiculously large tiny share portfolio, check out all trades in 2009 plus the full portfolio of more than 700 holdings worth less than $50,000. We added Carsales.com.au to the portfolio yesterday, spending $500 at $3.80 a share.
Hong Kong activist a good model for Down Under
The world's best retail shareholder activist is an English chap in Hong Kong called David Webb, who spent several years as a director of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The latest brief update to readers of his free email newsletter includes a great gotcha story plus some familiar arguments about the equity of capital raising rules. Maybe we should take note of David's commendable brevity as well:
Monday 14th September 2009
Dear Reader,
Please don't forget to take our opinion poll on rights issues and open offers.
NEW ARTICLE
Neo-Neon CEO's bogus degree
LED-lighting maker Neo-Neon (1868) appoints a new CEO with a bogus doctorate from a non-existent UK University.
RECENT ARTICLE
HKEx rights issue & open offer proposals (7-Sep-09)
We need your help! HKEx proposes to change the rules on open offers and rights issues. Some of the changes are against investor interests. HKEx also fails to propose a limit on open offer discounts or to bring the treatment of unsubscribed entitlements up to international standards. Give us your opinions!
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Visit our archives, and do your homework before you invest.
Stand by for a deluge of executive pay figures
September is the annual report season and yesterday's mail bag was the biggest in months courtesy of notices of meeting and annual reports from CSL, Ansell, Pharmaxis, Maxitrans and Transfield Services Infrastructure Fund. These documents are only really important for disclosing two things: how much were the board and management paid last financial year and are they asking shareholders for any more this year?
Fairfax Media got the season off to a bad start when it revealed former CEO David Kirk had exited with $4.9 million for his final 6 months of labour. We've dutifully included Kirk in our master list tracking excessive CEO payouts and also wrote about this issue for Crikey. The Fairfax AGM on November 10 will be very interesting indeed with chairman Ron Walker seeking another three year term.
The biggest protest votes over executive pay last year were against Transurban, Wesfarmers, Boral and Toll. However, we're yet to see a remuneration protest translate into a board protest, although some are tipping Ron Walker might be under pressure given the previous Fairfax CEO Fred Hilmer also got a big payout.
Classic Cornwall - the need for more education spending
More sprays for NAB scale back
After The AFR published our letter last Monday (see last edition), it was good of them to follow up with this effort from fellow disgruntled NAB shareholder Geoff Bolton the next day:
Another de-NABbed investor
I also suffered the NAB treatment of small shareholders described by Stephen Mayne (7 Sep letters). Furthermore I'd also sold an equivalent $15,000 value from my prior holding, with the aim of increasing it via the SPP, but was allocated only the paltry 202 shares maximum, so my NAB holding is now a lower proportion of my portfolio - because I then spent the refund investing in another major Australian company which outperforms NAB in both yield and return-on-equity.
So longer-term Michael Chaney and his board have probably done me a favour, although it is sad to see his stellar career at Wesfarmers etc followed by this demonstration of the 'Peter Principle' in his NAB board's decisions regarding individual investors.
And I'm giving Stephen my remaining proxies, to support his protest at the next AGM and recommend other NAB shareholders do the same.
Geoff Bolton
Perhaps the most comprehensive spray against NAB was saved for Sky's Business View program last Friday afternoon. Click on the video below:
Paladin joins the placement shame file
Uranium miner Paladin Resources has shafted its 23,000 small shareholders by not offering a share purchase plan after last week's $430 million institutional placement. CEO John Borschoff has been dodging shareholder queries so I sent the following email to Alan Kohler, Stephen Bartholomeusz and Robert Gottliebsen after they got good access to the man last Friday in a KGB interrogation for Business Spectator:
Guys, enjoyed your KGB with Borshoff but it would have been nice if you'd broached the issue of why Paladin is the only company since October last year to raise more than $120m without a single dollar coming from retail investors.
The idea of big placements without SPPs ended with CBA in October 2008 and then, to a lesser extent, with Iluka in May this with a $114m placement. However, at least Iluka had done a bigger pro-rata $334m raising in 2007 and at least CBA did an uncapped SPP in February this year.
Paladin is way out on its own doing a straight placement and Borschoff is not responding to shareholder emails so would have been good for you guys to put him on the spot on behalf of 23,000 shafted retail investors.
Cheers, Stephen Mayne
Haven't heard back from the KGB yet but we'll let you know in the next edition if they reply. Meanwhile, Paladin has joined our SPP shame file list although at the moment it isn't too bad given the placement price was $4.60 and the stock is now trading at $4.46.
Placements aren't too bad if they are issued at market prices and at least the Paladin offer was priced at only a 6% discount to the previous closing price. Deals like the $900 million Wesfarmers placement at $14.25 last February were a lot worse.
Paladin were also given a spray on Sky's Business View program last year as you see here.
Tracking the commentators who defend retail shareholders
The last edition of The Mayne Report complained that Australia's top business commentators weren't standing up aggressively enough for shafted retail shareholders in the $100 billion deluge of capital raisings over the past 18 months.
Terry McCrann has been the best of them and followed up with another excellent effort in The Weekend Australian. Just so no-one can later complain that their work wasn't acknowledged, we've decided to list all web-published columns on the issue. If we've missed any, please email stephen@maynereport.com.
September 12, 2009
Conspiracy of silence on market flaws
Terry McCrann, The Weekend Australian
September 9, 2009
A question of equity
Stephen Bartholomeusz, Business Spectator
September 8, 2009
Rights and wrongs
John Durie, The Australian
September 3, 2009
No room at the trough for mums and dads
Terry McCrann, Herald Sun
August 27, 2009
Asciano handout a winner
Terry McCrann, Herald Sun
August 18, 2009
Boart sold on issue rip-off
Terry McCrann, Herald Sun
August 15, 2009
NAB shows buying retail can deny you profits
Malcolm Maiden, The Age
August 11, 2009
Bendigo can screw them over like the big banks
Terry McCrann, Herald Sun
December 12, 2008
Speed Dating for Desperados
Alan Kohler, Business Spectator
Help get the S249P statement up for Woolies
I've never before been involved in gathering the required 100 signatures necessary for what's called a S249P statement to be distributed to all shareholders in the notice of meeting ahead of an AGM.
Indeed, it has happened less than 20 times in Australia as can be seen from this list.
However, Senator Nick Xenophon is a politician who understands what can be achieved with some shareholder activism and he is sharpening his focus on the Woolies board over the 12,000 pokies run by Australia's biggest retailer.
The Senator's home page includes a big picture of Woolies with the words “fresh food” crossed out and replaced by “pokies”. However, he's gone a step further and is soliciting for the required 100 shareholder signatures to get this proposed 249P statement sent to the company's 300,000-plus shareholders.
Woolies have also agreed to hand over an electronic copy of their share register to Paul Bendat, who is working with Senator Xenophon on this campaign. Check out Paul Bendat's excellent pokieact.org website and if you're a Woolies shareholder, why not get on board the petition process.
Cornwall joins the Gillard push
Chinese investments in Australian Resources
The Mayne Report has built up some useful lists tracking the following various components of foreign ownership in Australia. The following are worth a look:
Foreign-owned major resource projects
50 major Australian resource projects that are controlled by foreign investors.
Foreign companies generating more than $200m
240 foreign companies that generate more than $200 million in Australia each year.
Australia's improving foreign ownership record
80 Australian companies generating more than $200m a year offshore.
Foreign winners and losers in Australia
Australia has one of the most globalised western economies in the world but have the stampede of foreign investors actually made a quid Down Under. Here is our take on the happy and unhappy foreign players in Australia.
Taking a closer look at foreign investment with a focus on Chinese ownership, have a look at this list of foreign government investments in Australia, which demonstrates how both Singapore and China now own more Australian business assets than our own government. Moreover, this list tracks Chinese Government investments in Australian resource projects and here are some of the latest entries:
CGNPC Uranium Resources: the Chinese state-owned energy group (URC) plans to acquire the Perth-based uranium explorer, Energy Metals. The takeover offer is through a subsidiary, China Uranium Development (CUD) and is upwards of $119 million or $1.02 a share.
China Railway Materials: a Chinese state-owned enterprise, with the group agreeing to take a 12 per cent stake worth $12.6 million, in the junior iron ore explorer, FerrAus, a wannabe iron ore miner in the Pilbara.
Baosteel: the Chinese steel giant reached a co-operation agreement in August 2009 with WA-based explorer Aquila Resources. Baosteel invests $286 million for nearly 44 million shares. The agreement will assist development of its iron ore, coal and manganese projects.
Finally watch this video compilation of short commentary about Chinese investment in Australia.
Press Room and podcasts
Below are this weeks contributions:
774 ABC Melbourne - discussing the markets and Wall St.
Click the link to get the latest radio and AGM audio.
The Cornwall gallery
Former Fairfax and Crikey cartoonist Mark Cornwall has been contributing his satirical commentary to the Mayne Report since March 2009. Here is a collection of his best cartoons and there are now also some amusing animations. Go here to see his animations.
Carsales contributes to Mayne Report Rich List
Since we began compiling the Mayne Report Rich List documenting every Australian currently or previously worth more then $10 million, it has grown in numbers, now up to 1375 entries, and popularity such that no other feature on our website can match it for traffic.
Last week's Carsales.com float produced several new entrants for the list. The top 20 shareholder list released on Thursday morning threw up names such as:
Greg Roebuck: the Carsales.com.au CEO sold into the float but retains 2.56 million shares worth more than $10 million.
Geoff Brady: the veteran Melbourne car dealer owns 3.6 million shares in carsales.com.au which are worth more than $12 million.
Steve Kloss: a car dealer who owns 2.435 million shares in carsales.com.au worth about $10 million.
There's also one other new entrant on the list this week:
Symon Drake-Brockman: as a non-executive director of Nexus he is expected to hold around 70 million shares, or 7.3% of Nexus' diluted capital. He was formerly CEO of RBS Global Banking and Markets in the Americas and CEO of RBS Greenwich Capital, Global Head of RBS' Debt Markets division and board member of RBS' Global Banking and Markets.
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Sign up for Mayne Report Tweets
We have only been twittering for a few months, but now have 697 followers and are regularly dropping out the latest developments from AGMs, capital raising plays and even Manningham Council. Sign up above to get the latest updates from all our activity and below are a couple of our latest tweets:
Monday: Exited Structural Systems SPP for gain of $1040. $30,000 application for Bendigo Bank shares scaled back to $13.500. Not a bad result.
Thursday: Interesting talk to AMP marketing dept in Sydney today. Kept fee down at $500 given approach made shortly after combative AGM
That's all for this week. There'll be more updates on Twitter, plus an appearance with Jon Faine's fill-in presenter Bruce Guthrie for the 774 ABC Melbourne Media segment on Wednesday morning. Ten years since Kennett's fall, The National Times, Crikey and much more to discuss so tune in if you get a chance.
Do ya best, Stephen Mayne
* The Mayne Report is a multi-media governance website published by Stephen Mayne with occasional email editions. To unsubscribe from the emails click here.
what follows, including a just-published 2000-word column for Fairfax, is perhaps our most comprehensive offering yet as we settle in to hear President's Obama's lecture to Wall Street in five minutes time.
Enjoy!
Latest column for Fairfax websites and Business View
Fairfax Media's www.businessday.com.au has just gone live with our latest column which slices and dices various capital raising structures whilst skewering Bendigo & Adelaide Bank for coming up with one of the most poorly structured deals of the year.
There's plenty of lively arguments put out there so do check it out if you get a chance.
Last Friday we also spent an hour on Sky's Business View program and the videos have been edited down on this special playlist, although apologies if any of them wobble on your computers. NAB have certainly copped it again for their retail shareholder shafting, so much so that even host Helen Dalley intimated it was argued a little too forcefully.
A sudden deluge of hostile EGMs
The Mayne Report has long-complained about the lack of a culture of shareholder pressure in Australia, so at one level it is good to see a sudden unprecedented out-break of hostile EGMs from aggrieved minority shareholders.
Indeed, our list of hostile EGMs or resolutions over the past 20 years has now reached 26, with the following 6 additions over the past three months alone:
Amadeus Energy: listed investment firm CVC and two other shareholders called an EGM in August 2009 to remove directors and defeat a dilutive selective share placement but then reached this accommodation with board seats and a share purchase plan for retail investors.
Multiplex Prime Property Fund: greenmailer Nicholas Bolton has called an EGM for October 7 proposing the manager be removed and the partly paid fund be wound up. The directors have added their own resolutions re-appointing Brookfield and approving a 178-for-1 capital raising at 0.1c to raise $50 million and massively dilute Bolton's 19% stake given he doesn't have the $10 million required to avoid dilution.
Premium Investors: Dixon Advisory went in with the jackboots proposing to remove all directors in June 2008 and appoint four of their own whilst also conducting a massive buy-back. This truce was reached in July where the requisition was withdrawn in exchange for three capital management resolutions being put to shareholders which were all comfortably approved.
Redflex: a selective and discounted placement announced on September 10 sparked this EGM requisition on September 11 from the Pratt family, Hunter Hall and Renaisance to remove three directors, including the chairman, and replace them with three new candidates.
RHG: Steve Johnson and Greg Hoffman from The Intelligent Investor have called an EGM nominating themselves to the board of the old RAMS Home Loan business and proposing to remove David Coe as a director. They've set up a special website prosecuting their case complete with 1800 number.
VanEyk Three Pillars: Dixon Advisory called an EGM in August 2009 to sack the entire board and replace them with their own people. Also proposed a 25% buy-back.
These six corporate actions hone in on two of the biggest issues in the market right now: selective placements and investment companies trading at discounts to claimed net assets.
Dixon Advisory is right to focus on LICs trading at discounts but their tactics have been a bit thuggish with minimal engagement before the requisition to remove all directors. And the targets haven't exactly been the worst offenders. An outfit like VanEyk Three Pillars actually has good governance and trades at only a modest discount.
The Redflex action looks well based because the board was proposing a selective discounted placement when it previously had refused to countenance takeover offers at much higher prices, as Mark Hawthorne explained in this excellent piece for www.businessday.com.au.
The Redflex stoush even made this US publication given the Melbourne-based company is one of the biggest speed camera operators in the US, which makes sense given Victoria runs the world's most officious and lucrative traffic regulation and fines regime.
Morgan Stanley still less valuable than our Big Four cartel members
Melbourne-boy James Gorman received a truck-load of publicity over the weekend after rising to the very top at Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street giant which went close to going under in the wake of the Lehman Bros collapse but is now capitalised at $US40 billion.
Whilst Morgan Stanley shares have tripled to almost $US30 from their lows last year, it is sobering to note that all of the Australian Big Four are worth more than this so-called global power house.
Indeed, The Weekend Australian's top 150 list in Saturday's paper listed the market capitalisation rankings as follows:
1. BHP-Billiton: $128.5 billion (excludes PLC shares but ASX still won't fix this error every week)
2. Westpac: $74.1 billion
3. CBA: $73.7 billion
4. NAB: $62.3 billion
5. ANZ: $57.9 billion
That said, Gorman is running a far more complex and competitive global operation than the relatively easy job of being part of the Australian banking cartel, which has seen the Big Four hit a combined market capitalisation of $267 billion courtesy of their strategy of gouging consumers with the world's most expensive financial services.
Where does James Gorman rank in the Aussie expat list?
The Mayne Report, even going back to Crikey days, has long tracked the success of expat Australians in business and the ascension of James Gorman at Morgan Stanley is clearly an unprecedented event.
Whilst former Australian diplomat and Lend Lease chairman Jill Ker-Conway was a long-serving non-executive director of Merrill Lynch, no Australian has even been CEO of a Wall Street major.
Tony Burgess, now back in Melbourne running a boutique advisory business, was for a while Deusche Bank's global co-head of mergers and acquisitions out of its London office and Rob Rankin has recently been appointed to run Deutsche Bank's Asia Pacific operations. Before that we had Ahmed Fahour sitting on the Citigroup executive committee up until 2003.
Australia has a dreadful record when it comes to producing global companies in fast moving consumer goods, but we're the world's best at producing CEOs of FMCG companies. Look no further than Douglas Daft at Coke, the late Charlie Bell at McDonalds, Paul Johnson at Campbell Soup, Geoffrey Bible at Philip Morris and Philip Bowman at Allied Domecq.
However, the only problem with the above list is that they are all "former CEOs". The only incumbent we've got is Kellogg's CEO David Mackay, although he was born in New Zealand.
It's an interesting debate and do check out our list tracking the past and current Australian success stories in global business.
For mine, Gorman is about to become the second most credentialled Australian offshore after Andrew Liveris, the CEO of Dow Chemical, although it is only capitalised at $US27 billion. However, even the Liveris record has been tainted somewhat by his position on the Citigroup board when it basically went broke and had to be bailed out.
We shouldn't ignore Rupert Murdoch and Frank Lowy in this debate, but they are founder entrepeneurs rather than professional CEOs. Rupert has taken News Corp to the US and it's shares have recovered in recent months to the point where it is now capitalised at $37 billion. Frank Lowy still lives in Sydney but Westfield is the world's biggest shopping centre company and Frank remains the largest shareholder with about 8% of something worth $30 billion.
Mark Day lets fly at Crikey
The Australian's veteran media commentator Mark Day let fly at Crikey yesterday in this feisty column which was heavily promoted off page one. The comments at the bottom of the column are running heavily in Crikey's favour, which is a credit to The Australian's gate-keepers for letting them through.
Day has consistently covered Crikey over the past decade, with a range of bouquets and brickbats. The brickbats most often follow some Crikey attack on the Murdoch interests and so it was this time when he objected to Crikey raising a Press Council complaint about The Sunday Telegraph's bogus Pauline Hanson photos.
Crikey these days is sometimes a little self-conscious when it comes to criticisms but it was good to see they responded yesterday. Richard Farmer included the Day piece in his breakfast media wrap and the Crikey media blog run by Margaret Simons also returned to the fray in the email edition, although it is unfortunately behind the subscription gate.
The Simons defence was okay but didn't really deal with some of the criticism. For instance, Day rightly complained that Crikey too often almost celebrates the demise of newspapers. And so it was yesterday when the Crikey editorial sneered at The SMH for winning the PANPA newspaper of the year award when it's profits were declining.
Crikey is at its best when it is fearlessly critiquing all players in the media, but sometimes the commercial imperative of the broader stable within which it is housed - all internet-centric plays focused on competing primarily with Fairfax - tends to skew the coverage. For instance, Fairfax launched its opinion aggregation site www.nationaltimes.com.au yesterday which will steal substantial traffic share off its competitors, including Crikey.
Yet there wasn't anything in the Crikey Daily email yesterday critiqueing the new offering which included an interesting column by Malcolm Turnbull on print vs internet journalist and a somewhat more predictable effort from Kevin Rudd.
We're all into anonymous contributions now - except News Ltd
It was interesting that National Times has introduced an anonymous daily contribution to be known as The Goanna. It seems more and more media outlets are cottoning on to the advantages of running anonymous material. Back in the early Crikey days, this was one of the biggest criticisms levelled against us. We were regularly sneered at for poor journalistic practices but when you consider The Weekend Fin's Prince column, Heckler in The Sunday Age, The Rumour File on 3AW, The Goanna and the large anonymous gossip section in modern day Crikey called "tips and rumours", it seems everyone is getting in on the anonymous act.
Funnily enough, it seems that the Fairfax stable is these days far more into anonymous contributions than News Ltd, although Fairfax has been very slow to embrace reader comments, something which does feature on National Times.
Indeed, it was someone at Fairfax who was once caught anonymously tampering with Crikey's wikipedia entry. At least with News Ltd they stand up and launch their attacks loud and proud.
The Murdoch stable have certainly launched the biggest attacks on Crikey over the years and Day's spray yesterday was just the latest. Check out a few earlier pastings in this piece from 2006 when Piers Akerman was taken to the Press Council after he claimed Crikey wasn't run or owned by real journalists.
Mark Day's only comparable attack to yesterday's effort was after the 2005 News Corp AGM in New York when he found this special edition of Crikey particularly objectionable. Check out this Crikey piece which wraps up both sides of the argument.
The most famous of these News Ltd counter-attacks was Terry McCrann's remarkable 6000-word spray in July 2004, but who can forget Andrew Bolt's storming of the ABC radio studios in 2005. Have a listen.
It's a much more peaceful life these days focusing on corporate governance and life as a councillor at the City of Manningham.
Manningham endorsed Aldi proposal, funds second tram study, quits Family Day Care
Speaking of Manningham, the edited audio highlights from the most recent public council meetings are available here.
The August 25 meeting was an interesting affair. Have a listen to the edited audio from four of the debates:
Endorsing the Doncaster Hill Smart Energy Zone Development
Endorsing Aldi proposal to replace axed Woolies supermarket at Jackson Court
Withdrawing from Family Day Care service with a heavy heart
Speaking in favour of second study into the tram extension to Doncaster
Backing the state government's new special activity zone for Doncaster Hill
Asciano calls in the heavies, but lame duck chairs stays too long
Corporate Melbourne is currently suffering from a shortage of credible professional directors who can step up and chair ASX100 companies. I was lamenting this very problem with a major shareholder in Asciano three weeks ago and as we kicked around names of people who could replace Tim Poole as Asciano. I did mention former North Ltd and Orica CEO Malcolm Broomhead but still thought he had health problems.
Lo and behold, Broomhead was announced as the new chairman two weeks ago and Asciano finally got itself a more regular board with Sydney-based Geoff Kleeman and former ANZ heavy Bob Edgar joining as part of a new broom, so to speak.
It was always a very strange decision to appoint Tim Poole chairman when he'd only ever been an underling to Mike Fitzpatrick sitting on some of the Hastings infrastructure boards. The Australian's John Durie neatly explained the history in a good column last week and Poole does deserve credit for voluntarily departing.
Poole will chair the Asciano AGM on October 23 and then immediately step down which is an unfortunate habit amongst major public companies. Surely shareholders should hear from whoever is taking the company forward rather than the old guard, especially when the record has been ordinary and the departure forced.
The same thing happened at ASX last year when Maurice Newman gave an appalling speech blasting the press and then promptly handed over to David Gonski at the end of the AGM.
ASX shareholders will finally get to hear from Gonski at this year's AGM in Sydney on September 30 and my flights have been booked for months.
Shock, horror - donation received at The Mayne Report
We've dropped about $200,000 on The Mayne Report over the past two years but everything has turned around since February this year when we resolved to move to a free model and then stumbled upon the strategy of focusing on capital raising plays to pay the bills.
The gross gains from these plays this year now exceeds $214,000 although when you combine that with more than $100,000 of crystallised capital losses putting together the world's biggest small share portfolio, we're still facing a net loss from the whole exercise.
However, the capital raising plays are showing no signs of slowing down and if it keeps producing profits of about $30,000 a month The Mayne Report will be able to continue as a free service into the future.
That said, it was very nice to last week receive our first donation since ditching paid subscriptions four months ago. It was only $50 but if anyone else wishes to help fund our activism and this free service, feel free to do likewise by clicking here.
The latest capital raising plays
Since the last edition we've crystallised three solid capital raising gains and copped a savage scale back from Virgin Blue. Here is the detail:
September 8
Whitehaven Coal: $15,000 into SPP at $3.05 and exited for $3.45 to make a profit of $1976.
September 9
Intermoco: $10,000 into $15,000 SPP at 1.5c and exited at 1.7c to make gross profit of $1333.
September 10
Virgin Blue: $23,000 into two 20c entitlement offers with unlimited ability to apply for extras but with just 130 shares held by the wife and I, was scaled back to just $47.80 worth of shares and a paper gain of about $35. Still waiting for refund.
September 14
Structural Systems: $15,000 into SPP at 78c which was scaled back by 24% or $3600. Exited at 85c for a profit of $1040.
Offers we're currently committed to
And here is the detail of bets we've currently placed:
Amcor: $25,000 into two entitlement offers at $4.30 which closed on September 10 and trades September 21.
Bank of Queensland: $8000 into entitlement offer at $10 which closed September 14 and trades September 22.
Bendigo & Adelaide Bank: $30,000 into two entitlement offers at $6.75 which trades September 17. Scaled back to $13,500.
Energy & Minerals Australia: $15,000 into two entitlements to $15,000 SPP at 21c which closed on September 9 and trades on September 23.
Goodman Group: $20,000 into two 1-for-1 entitlement offers at 40c which trades September 17.
Hills Industries: $5000 into SPP which closed September 11 and trades after September 15.
Sedgman: $10,000 into SPP at $1.30 which closes September 15 and trades September 22.
Skilled Engineering: $15,000 into SPP at $1.50 which closes September 18 and trades September 28.
Spotless: $4000 so far into $15,000 SPP at $2.16 or 2.5% discount. Closes September 17.
That represent total applications of $107,000 with refunds of $22,952 from Virgin Blue, $16,500 from Bendigo Bank and $3600 from Structural Systems due. This means the total funds committed as of now is $145,052 and there remains a big very pipeline of offers.
Check out this complete chronological list of all capital raising plays in 2009 and at the bottom is a list of the 30 or so upcoming offers.
There's also this version ranking the top 55-plus plays since January. And for the latest shuffles in our ridiculously large tiny share portfolio, check out all trades in 2009 plus the full portfolio of more than 700 holdings worth less than $50,000. We added Carsales.com.au to the portfolio yesterday, spending $500 at $3.80 a share.
Hong Kong activist a good model for Down Under
The world's best retail shareholder activist is an English chap in Hong Kong called David Webb, who spent several years as a director of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The latest brief update to readers of his free email newsletter includes a great gotcha story plus some familiar arguments about the equity of capital raising rules. Maybe we should take note of David's commendable brevity as well:
Monday 14th September 2009
Dear Reader,
Please don't forget to take our opinion poll on rights issues and open offers.
NEW ARTICLE
Neo-Neon CEO's bogus degree
LED-lighting maker Neo-Neon (1868) appoints a new CEO with a bogus doctorate from a non-existent UK University.
RECENT ARTICLE
HKEx rights issue & open offer proposals (7-Sep-09)
We need your help! HKEx proposes to change the rules on open offers and rights issues. Some of the changes are against investor interests. HKEx also fails to propose a limit on open offer discounts or to bring the treatment of unsubscribed entitlements up to international standards. Give us your opinions!
Pass it on!
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Visit our archives, and do your homework before you invest.
Stand by for a deluge of executive pay figures
September is the annual report season and yesterday's mail bag was the biggest in months courtesy of notices of meeting and annual reports from CSL, Ansell, Pharmaxis, Maxitrans and Transfield Services Infrastructure Fund. These documents are only really important for disclosing two things: how much were the board and management paid last financial year and are they asking shareholders for any more this year?
Fairfax Media got the season off to a bad start when it revealed former CEO David Kirk had exited with $4.9 million for his final 6 months of labour. We've dutifully included Kirk in our master list tracking excessive CEO payouts and also wrote about this issue for Crikey. The Fairfax AGM on November 10 will be very interesting indeed with chairman Ron Walker seeking another three year term.
The biggest protest votes over executive pay last year were against Transurban, Wesfarmers, Boral and Toll. However, we're yet to see a remuneration protest translate into a board protest, although some are tipping Ron Walker might be under pressure given the previous Fairfax CEO Fred Hilmer also got a big payout.
Classic Cornwall - the need for more education spending
More sprays for NAB scale back
After The AFR published our letter last Monday (see last edition), it was good of them to follow up with this effort from fellow disgruntled NAB shareholder Geoff Bolton the next day:
Another de-NABbed investor
I also suffered the NAB treatment of small shareholders described by Stephen Mayne (7 Sep letters). Furthermore I'd also sold an equivalent $15,000 value from my prior holding, with the aim of increasing it via the SPP, but was allocated only the paltry 202 shares maximum, so my NAB holding is now a lower proportion of my portfolio - because I then spent the refund investing in another major Australian company which outperforms NAB in both yield and return-on-equity.
So longer-term Michael Chaney and his board have probably done me a favour, although it is sad to see his stellar career at Wesfarmers etc followed by this demonstration of the 'Peter Principle' in his NAB board's decisions regarding individual investors.
And I'm giving Stephen my remaining proxies, to support his protest at the next AGM and recommend other NAB shareholders do the same.
Geoff Bolton
Perhaps the most comprehensive spray against NAB was saved for Sky's Business View program last Friday afternoon. Click on the video below:
Paladin joins the placement shame file
Uranium miner Paladin Resources has shafted its 23,000 small shareholders by not offering a share purchase plan after last week's $430 million institutional placement. CEO John Borschoff has been dodging shareholder queries so I sent the following email to Alan Kohler, Stephen Bartholomeusz and Robert Gottliebsen after they got good access to the man last Friday in a KGB interrogation for Business Spectator:
Guys, enjoyed your KGB with Borshoff but it would have been nice if you'd broached the issue of why Paladin is the only company since October last year to raise more than $120m without a single dollar coming from retail investors.
The idea of big placements without SPPs ended with CBA in October 2008 and then, to a lesser extent, with Iluka in May this with a $114m placement. However, at least Iluka had done a bigger pro-rata $334m raising in 2007 and at least CBA did an uncapped SPP in February this year.
Paladin is way out on its own doing a straight placement and Borschoff is not responding to shareholder emails so would have been good for you guys to put him on the spot on behalf of 23,000 shafted retail investors.
Cheers, Stephen Mayne
Haven't heard back from the KGB yet but we'll let you know in the next edition if they reply. Meanwhile, Paladin has joined our SPP shame file list although at the moment it isn't too bad given the placement price was $4.60 and the stock is now trading at $4.46.
Placements aren't too bad if they are issued at market prices and at least the Paladin offer was priced at only a 6% discount to the previous closing price. Deals like the $900 million Wesfarmers placement at $14.25 last February were a lot worse.
Paladin were also given a spray on Sky's Business View program last year as you see here.
Tracking the commentators who defend retail shareholders
The last edition of The Mayne Report complained that Australia's top business commentators weren't standing up aggressively enough for shafted retail shareholders in the $100 billion deluge of capital raisings over the past 18 months.
Terry McCrann has been the best of them and followed up with another excellent effort in The Weekend Australian. Just so no-one can later complain that their work wasn't acknowledged, we've decided to list all web-published columns on the issue. If we've missed any, please email stephen@maynereport.com.
September 12, 2009
Conspiracy of silence on market flaws
Terry McCrann, The Weekend Australian
September 9, 2009
A question of equity
Stephen Bartholomeusz, Business Spectator
September 8, 2009
Rights and wrongs
John Durie, The Australian
September 3, 2009
No room at the trough for mums and dads
Terry McCrann, Herald Sun
August 27, 2009
Asciano handout a winner
Terry McCrann, Herald Sun
August 18, 2009
Boart sold on issue rip-off
Terry McCrann, Herald Sun
August 15, 2009
NAB shows buying retail can deny you profits
Malcolm Maiden, The Age
August 11, 2009
Bendigo can screw them over like the big banks
Terry McCrann, Herald Sun
December 12, 2008
Speed Dating for Desperados
Alan Kohler, Business Spectator
Help get the S249P statement up for Woolies
I've never before been involved in gathering the required 100 signatures necessary for what's called a S249P statement to be distributed to all shareholders in the notice of meeting ahead of an AGM.
Indeed, it has happened less than 20 times in Australia as can be seen from this list.
However, Senator Nick Xenophon is a politician who understands what can be achieved with some shareholder activism and he is sharpening his focus on the Woolies board over the 12,000 pokies run by Australia's biggest retailer.
The Senator's home page includes a big picture of Woolies with the words “fresh food” crossed out and replaced by “pokies”. However, he's gone a step further and is soliciting for the required 100 shareholder signatures to get this proposed 249P statement sent to the company's 300,000-plus shareholders.
Woolies have also agreed to hand over an electronic copy of their share register to Paul Bendat, who is working with Senator Xenophon on this campaign. Check out Paul Bendat's excellent pokieact.org website and if you're a Woolies shareholder, why not get on board the petition process.
Cornwall joins the Gillard push
Chinese investments in Australian Resources
The Mayne Report has built up some useful lists tracking the following various components of foreign ownership in Australia. The following are worth a look:
Foreign-owned major resource projects
50 major Australian resource projects that are controlled by foreign investors.
Foreign companies generating more than $200m
240 foreign companies that generate more than $200 million in Australia each year.
Australia's improving foreign ownership record
80 Australian companies generating more than $200m a year offshore.
Foreign winners and losers in Australia
Australia has one of the most globalised western economies in the world but have the stampede of foreign investors actually made a quid Down Under. Here is our take on the happy and unhappy foreign players in Australia.
Taking a closer look at foreign investment with a focus on Chinese ownership, have a look at this list of foreign government investments in Australia, which demonstrates how both Singapore and China now own more Australian business assets than our own government. Moreover, this list tracks Chinese Government investments in Australian resource projects and here are some of the latest entries:
CGNPC Uranium Resources: the Chinese state-owned energy group (URC) plans to acquire the Perth-based uranium explorer, Energy Metals. The takeover offer is through a subsidiary, China Uranium Development (CUD) and is upwards of $119 million or $1.02 a share.
China Railway Materials: a Chinese state-owned enterprise, with the group agreeing to take a 12 per cent stake worth $12.6 million, in the junior iron ore explorer, FerrAus, a wannabe iron ore miner in the Pilbara.
Baosteel: the Chinese steel giant reached a co-operation agreement in August 2009 with WA-based explorer Aquila Resources. Baosteel invests $286 million for nearly 44 million shares. The agreement will assist development of its iron ore, coal and manganese projects.
Finally watch this video compilation of short commentary about Chinese investment in Australia.
Press Room and podcasts
Below are this weeks contributions:
774 ABC Melbourne - discussing the markets and Wall St.
Click the link to get the latest radio and AGM audio.
The Cornwall gallery
Former Fairfax and Crikey cartoonist Mark Cornwall has been contributing his satirical commentary to the Mayne Report since March 2009. Here is a collection of his best cartoons and there are now also some amusing animations. Go here to see his animations.
Carsales contributes to Mayne Report Rich List
Since we began compiling the Mayne Report Rich List documenting every Australian currently or previously worth more then $10 million, it has grown in numbers, now up to 1375 entries, and popularity such that no other feature on our website can match it for traffic.
Last week's Carsales.com float produced several new entrants for the list. The top 20 shareholder list released on Thursday morning threw up names such as:
Greg Roebuck: the Carsales.com.au CEO sold into the float but retains 2.56 million shares worth more than $10 million.
Geoff Brady: the veteran Melbourne car dealer owns 3.6 million shares in carsales.com.au which are worth more than $12 million.
Steve Kloss: a car dealer who owns 2.435 million shares in carsales.com.au worth about $10 million.
There's also one other new entrant on the list this week:
Symon Drake-Brockman: as a non-executive director of Nexus he is expected to hold around 70 million shares, or 7.3% of Nexus' diluted capital. He was formerly CEO of RBS Global Banking and Markets in the Americas and CEO of RBS Greenwich Capital, Global Head of RBS' Debt Markets division and board member of RBS' Global Banking and Markets.
Mayne Report RSS Feeds
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Sign up for Mayne Report Tweets
We have only been twittering for a few months, but now have 697 followers and are regularly dropping out the latest developments from AGMs, capital raising plays and even Manningham Council. Sign up above to get the latest updates from all our activity and below are a couple of our latest tweets:
Monday: Exited Structural Systems SPP for gain of $1040. $30,000 application for Bendigo Bank shares scaled back to $13.500. Not a bad result.
Thursday: Interesting talk to AMP marketing dept in Sydney today. Kept fee down at $500 given approach made shortly after combative AGM
That's all for this week. There'll be more updates on Twitter, plus an appearance with Jon Faine's fill-in presenter Bruce Guthrie for the 774 ABC Melbourne Media segment on Wednesday morning. Ten years since Kennett's fall, The National Times, Crikey and much more to discuss so tune in if you get a chance.
Do ya best, Stephen Mayne
* The Mayne Report is a multi-media governance website published by Stephen Mayne with occasional email editions. To unsubscribe from the emails click here.