1.
Please outline the selection process for the
recent chair succession. Were any external candidates considered, was any
outside firm involved in the selection process and were there multiple
candidates? If so, what was the voting process? When Patricia Cross was first
invited to join the board, was it with a view to appointing her as chair?
Answer: Yes, they went outside specifically looking for a new chair.
2.
Many thanks for once against disclosing the
proxy position to the ASX with the formal addresses before the meeting
commenced. OzForex has been doing this for longer than any other ASX300 company
that I'm aware of. Competitors like Macquarie refuse to do this. Please explain
the history of this excellent transparency practice and could Patricia Cross, a
former Macquarie director, commit to continuing this practice at future AGMs
when she takes over as chair. Well done on the 98%+ mandates on all resolutions
too.
Answer: Yes, we've always done that and will keep doing it.
3.
Could the CEO comment on how we are playing the
emergence of Crypto and whether he thinks the bubble will ever permanently
burst. Also, what does he think about the AFL taking tens of millions of
sponsorship dollars from Crypto.com? Isn't crypto more like gambling than
transacting? What is our involvement with the industry?
Answer: We're watching it closely and it helps having a San Francisco office. The fees for traders tend to be very high.
4.
Best practice with director elections is to
disclose as much information as possible, including the city of residence and
age of candidates. Could Patricia Cross and Connie Carnabuci please provide
this information when addressing shareholders. Also, what are Patricia's plan
in terms of building her shareholding in the company as chair?
5.
I fully support the appointment of Patricia
Cross as chair. She speaks six languages and OzForex is her sixth listed
financial services board seat over the past 25 years, the others being AMP,
NAB, Macquarie, Suncorp Metway, Aviva PLC. Could she please comment on why she
never served as chair on any of these other boards when she now clearly has
demonstrated ambition to be an ASX300 financial services independent chair at
Ozforex. Did she never have the support to be chair at those other 5 companies
or did she never put her hand up? If not, why not?
Answer: It was offered but with three young kids I didn't have the time. The kids are all now grown up, so she's ready to a public company chair.
6.
I've participated in more than 100 online AGMs
by ASX listed companies since COVID struck and this is the first one taking
questions via Zoom. It seems to be working fine? Are you aware of any other
listed companies which used Zoom like this and why did you choose Zoom over the
other options such as Lumi? Is Zoom the cheapest option in the market and do
you know how many people are currently participating through zoom?
7.
Could Connie please comment on her experience of
the board recruitment process at OFX Also, could Connie please provide her side
of the story on the Christian Porter defamation saga when she was general
counsel at the ABC. Were Mr Porter's attacks on the ABC in any way justifiable
and did she enjoy being cross examined by MPs at Parliament House in Canberra
on this and other matters?
8.
It is a shame there were no questions in the
room at today's AGM. How many independent shareholders have actually bothered
to attend today and what is the seating capacity in the room at your
headquarters up there on level 20 of 60 Margaret Street? Will you consider
using incentives to attract more shareholders to attend next year's AGM?
9.
Could the out-going chair please comment on
whether he believes a chair should develop multiple viable internal successors
and acknowledge that he didn't do this at OFX, hence the need to recruit a
successor from outside. Will Patricia Cross undertake to recruit or help
develop viable internal chair successors so we don't have to go outside again
when we next deal with chair succession.
10.
It is very unusual for a full time public
servant to be allowed to serve on an ASX300 board. Could Connie explain the
background on how and why she was allowed to do that for two years at OFX up
until her resignation from the ABC last year.
11.
Given the interesting discussions across a range
of topics today, could the chair undertake to make an archived copy of the
webcast plus a full transcript of proceedings available on the company's
website? The likes of Nine, AGL, ASX, ANZ, CIMIC, Domino's, G8 Education and
Lend Lease all produced their 1st AGM transcripts in 2021. Will you follow suit
today?
12.
How many years have we used the current audit
firm? Have we ever put the audit to tender and do we have any plans in the
future to put the audit to tender. Let's hope we don't end up like Macquarie
Group which has paid PwC and its predecessor firms more than $1 billion in
audit and other fees over many decades without ever putting the audit to
tender. Could Patricia Cross comment on why she never insisted on an audit
tender when serving on the Macquarie board and whether she regards regular
audit tendering as good practice.
13.
New chair Patricia Cross made quite a pointed
comment on the big banks needing competiton from the likes of OFX in the forex
market. In light of these comments, could she advise whether she still owns any
shares in NAB or Macquarie, where she served on the board, and whether she and
her high flying lawyer husband plan to
fully divest from investments in all OFX competitors. Also, well done to
Patricia for commmiting to buy 100,000 shares tomorrow. Feel free to answer
this question in one of the 5 non-English languages that you speak.
14.
Who was reading out the online questions today.
He did a good job with no editing or censorship and accurate pairing up the
specific question with the relevant resolutions. Well done for also having a
general question session at the end of the formal business. This is good
practice. Please stick with
the hybrid in future years.
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