I would prefer an Australian Chairman with finance understanding to provide a motivating guideance and interact with key team members.
If we all just go: "I want" or "I'd prefer", etc it's not taking us much further except to express our genuinely held wishes.
Surely motivation and guidance from the Chairman is not useful UNLESS you have the proper level of expertise on the ground. From what I can see we had a perfectly competent finance Director with associated understanding in Alan Studley on the ground and providing plenty of expert guidance and motivation was the current Chairman.
We should guard against wanting to believe the story instead of seeking out the truth, in all aspects of our lives.
Nobody it seems wants to talk about it now, but the story that Diasource wanted to steal our IP was and remains, paranoid baloney. But people swallowed it, just like they did the Trump lines. The result has been unnecessarily damaging to ADO's credibility and unfairly nasty for AS.
This baggage and the requirement of Australian based, narrows our options.
My point is that the Chairman's role is more than strategic. I think John Hurrel's value and expertise as Chairman has been seriously underestimated by an angry mob of shareholders baying for blood.
As far as I can work out, he must have been responsible for the sourcing of the current CEO from his original placement on the battery team. Certainly it happened under his leadership, and much more besides (including the retaining of expert advice on various strategic and governance matters, finding a buyer for Diasource etc.) which has placed the company on a much surer footing than blind faith, "Mix n'Go" and risky loans and share dilution to the tune of over one billion.
The danger is that if any more serious nonsense occurs, we will lose our major shareholder base. It's a warning that @ds made about Mark Bouris. It wasn't the case then, as he cannot have his mind on the job, and major shareholders knew it.
But any more bloodletting of reputable, capable let alone expert individuals is really dangerous. I'm surprised @ds has gone completely quiet on this risk as if it doesn't exist.
Major shareholders may not read it as HC posters do, and may see the removal of competent people and the existence of a disgruntled outlier such as RM as a danger to stability.
(Was RM ever really entitled to pass judgement on what is good governance at ADO? Will he stand aside or are there more Molotov cocktails coming from him as good governance guru?)
I want to know why you think the Chairman was unworthy of remaining in the job. It's just the Australia-based thing? Because RM was Australia based and he didn't do much for the company at all from what I can see. Just arranged some emergency loans that were necessary as a result of his own dubious decisions.
How are we going to get the necessary expertise (in negotiating in particular), since Australia is so far from being a centre of industrial and intellectual property commercialisation? It might happen but the narrowing of scope means we'll be lucky. The new CEO is to be congratulated for hanging in there. Luckily for us he was already on the team. Who secured that? See what I mean?
I agree on the usefulness of consultants. But in order to go into the future, and manage it successfully it's necessary to understand the past. Let's hope the company is able to move forward so we can actually monetise this commercial potential. Right now, more questions remain unanswered. I'm nervously bullish. There doesn't seem to be a button to click for that sentiment.
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