god news day!, page-3

Included this to show not everyone is enamoured with boardroom room ructions. Tim Boreham usually good but feel he is too focused on the fight and not the exc situation facing VOC which CEO sez will NOT be jeopardised to any extent by rapid takeup of NBN.

• The Australian
• 12:00AM October 13, 2016
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• TIM BOREHAM
  
  Criterion columnist
  Melbourne
  
  

Vocus Communications (VOC) $5.49
Told ya so.
Criterion long contended M2 Telecommunications — aka The Very Hungry Caterpillar — would chew up one purchase too many and end up with nasty indigestion.
Now merged with Vocus, M2’s tummy ache comes in the guise of a boardroom squabble — now apparently resolved — over who runs the sand pit.
Spilling its guts yesterday, Vocus said executive director James Spenceley and director Tony Grist had agreed to depart, after their proposal to remove CEO Geoff Horth was torpedoed by the four other directors (two of them from the old Vocus).
Horth, who is not on the board, was M2’s head honcho while Spenceley founded and ran the old Vocus.
Grist founded Amcom, which Vocus acquired last year.

The muffled signal down the string and jam tin is that Horth and Spenceley didn’t exactly hit it off, although it was not proposed that Spenceley take over from Horth.
The dissident duo quit after Vocus chairman David Spence (also chair of the old Vocus) demanded the matter be settled at Tuesday’s board showdown.
Vocus shares were sold off by a sedate 2.5 per cent yesterday, having already been under pressure since last month’s unrelated resignation of chief finance officer Rick Correll and rival TPG Telecom’s abysmal earnings outlook.
On the available evidence, the schism doesn’t suggest a strategic difference of opinion between the Vocus/Amcom and M2 camps. The former was oriented to fixed infrastructure, the latter towards the retail (consumer and small business) segments.
Spenceley maintains that a CEO with a “fresh set of eyes” is needed, although a specific candidate was not put forward.
In an unfortunately timed report, broker Citi on Tuesday described Vocus’s 35 per cent share price slide as “excessive”.
Maybe so, but when the birdies in their boardroom nest don’t agree we also get a queasy feeling. Avoid.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...e|Tim_Boreham|index|author&itmt=1476341885508