5 questions lodged at 2024 Starpharma hybrid AGM
December 1, 2024
Below is the text of the 5 written questions submitted at the Starpharma hybrid AGM held on November 26, 2024. The formals lasted 64 minutes and the meeting was adjourned for three days to sort out what the chair called a "stuff up" on the rem report with a large offshore shareholder which wanted to change its vote. When the meeting resumed on November 29, the rem report finished with a 14.8% against vote. These normal voting results withheld the earlier proxy data on rem which was a bit dodgy.
Q1. PwC has been our external auditor more more than 20 years. How many competitive tenders have we run for the audit job over that period and when are we next intending to tender our audit work?
Q2. Did any of the 5 main proxy advisers - ACSI, Ownership Matters, Glass Lewis, ISS and ASA - issue a report ahead of today's AGM. If so, did they all recommend in favour of Lynda Cheng's re-election today? After last year's contested board election and multiple protest votes, have there been any material protest votes against any of today's resolutions or have relations with our major shareholders settled down? Could Lynda please comment on the role she played during the tumult that peaked at last year's AGM with some of our major shareholders backing an external candidate for the board who was opposed by Lynda and her then board colleagues?
Q3. Best practice is now to disclose the proxy position to the ASX along with the formal addresses to offer more timely disclosure to the market? The likes of Origin Energy, NAB, Car Group, Viva Energy, Webjet, Xero, Myer, Brambles and JB Hi Fi all do this. Will you adopt this practice at next year's AGM? Given that more than 98% of voted stock is done by proxy 48 hours before the AGM, the meeting itself is essentially an election outcome announcement event. But if you don't disclose the outcome in a timely manner, we finish up debating in the dark. Have there been any material against votes today, including on this remuneration report item?
Q4. When disclosing the outcome of voting on all resolutions today, but particularly this LTI grant to the new CEO, could you please advise the ASX how many shareholders voted for and against each item, similar to what happens with a scheme of arrangement? This will provide a better gauge of retail shareholder sentiment on all resolutions and insight into the chronically low retail shareholder participation rate. Quite a few small shareholders vote against all rem items and it is useful to know how many have done this at each AGM. Others have already blazed the trail as this was a voluntary disclosure initiative adopted by the likes of Qantas, ASX, Suncorp, Tabcorp and our own share registry provider Computershare during the current AGM season. You've got the data, so why not let the sun shine in?
Q5. The 5 most valuable US big tech stocks - Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Nvidia - are together worth more than $20 trillion, largely because they have enormous pricing power and are over-charging customers the world over. Could the CEO comment on which of the big global technology companies we are most reliant on and what would we do if they suddenly put their prices up by 30%?
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