AGMs

7 questions at 2022 Magellan AGM


October 20, 2022

Here is the text of 7 written questions submitted at the 2022 Magellan Financial Group hybrid AGM held on Thursday, October 20.

1. Is it correct that our former chairman Brett Cairns was effectively fired by Hamish Douglass? When is he going to pay back the $4 million loan that the company gave him to buy shares. Does the new independent chair now agree that it was bad corporate governance to involve all of the directors and many staff in leveraged equity schemes funded by company loans and what is his personal involvement in this scheme?

2. Hamish McLennon is an advertising man, who has done a fabulous job at REA but struggled at Network Ten. What does he know about funds management? The most important job for the Magellan board is picking good stock pickers. We've now lost both of our supposedly legendary founders, Hamish Douglass and Chris Mackay, from a stock picking perspective. What value does Hamish McLennon add when it comes to stock picking and why did Chris Mackay leave the investment team recently when he was meant to be the saviour after Hamish Douglass imploded?

3. When are we going to deal with the issue of dozens of directors and staff being enormously underwater on these ill-considered equity incentive schemes. Is it true that the FBT bill would be more than $50 million if we forgave all liabilities. Our current market capitalization is currently $2 billion. Isn't it worth just biting the bullet, paying the FBT bill and cancelling all of these liabilities as it can't be helping with morale, retention and recruitment.

4. When will our chair Hamish McLennon break away from the Murdoch family and all they represent, such as support for Donald Trump and worldwide climate denialism. Hamish now has a full non-Murdoch dance card on various public company board and at Rugby Australia so all it would take is declaring himself to be an independent chair of REA. Can Hamish cite any other fully committed professional NEDs who serve independently at multiple companies but then allow themselves to be a nominee director elsewhere. Why is he still hanging around the Murdochs and do his personal climate change views align with prominent Sky News climate change deniers such as Rowan Dean and Andrew Bolt?

5. Why didn't we participate in the takeover activity involving Pendal and Perpetual, along with the merger of Regal and VGI. And why was it Regal rather than Magellan which recently opportunistically bought 5.5% of our biggest competitor, Platinum Asset Management. Are we looking at anything on the M&A or just sitting back and watching our FUM dwindle more and more with each passing month?

6. 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?

7. Fund managers, like high rating radio shock jocks, are usually in the 5 highest paid employees at a company but this is often not disclosed because they are not regarded as Key Management Personnel. How many of our fund managers are paid more than the lowest paid KMP disclosed in our annual report and could we please better disclose the huge pay packets to our key fund managers.