sale of beatrice biodiesel, page-36

I would be guessing that the majority of shareholders would want to see the maximum now extracted in cash from the value of this company. So the major skill involved in managing this company is liquidation and extraction of value rather than skill in the management and construction of a biodiesel plant. Therefore perhaps a different CEO is required.

At this point its interesting to look in the annual report under the section on Corporate Governance. Here the company's approach to governance is compared to the "ASX Corporate Governance Councils Principles of Good Corporate Governance and Best Practice Recommendations". One of these is that the position of Chairman should be an independent director and that the roles of Chairman and CEO should not be occupied by the same individual.

The company fronts up and states it is non-complying. Suddenly the importance of these principles becomes more apparent.

If for example it would be best for the company's shareholders to replace the CEO, it hardly seems likely that the Chairman is going to ring around the independent directors to canvas their opinion as to whether he should remove himself as CEO !!!

The Annual report also appears to state how the independent directors will or have been monitoring the combined role of Chairman and CEO.

I think at this point it would be sensible to ring and email the independent directors rather than Mr Anderton, as to what monitoring they have been doing, and if they believe during this critical phase and meeting Mr Anderton should remove himself from the role of either Chairman or CEO, so that the shareholders can have the confidence that the decision to continue the enterprise is being made in the best interests of the Shareholders and not in the best interests of the CEO keeping his continuing renumeration.


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This is all my inexpert opinion, but I believe that the separation of the roles of CEO and Chairman, is crucial to what is taking place currently.