But my point is he isn't an executive director, and neither is Brett Lambert the mining engineer.
While it is good to have these skills on the board, they are not executives and won't be getting involved in the day-to-day operations of the business.
I don't doubt at all that their experience will be beneficial to the board.
I'm just saying that independent directors are there to represent us. They're there to make sure the executives are playing fair and have the right systems/tools/processes in place to bring this thing together.
They're to make sure the executives are being paid properly, not to tell them how to do their jobs.
If you take a high level view of the board's skills, we have plenty of technical (Andy, Brett and now Peter) and finance (Simon and Steve) but no legal.
You can hire a metallurgist to work on the PFS. You can't hire a lawyer as an employee to keep the board in check. That's what the independent directors do.
Lastly, corporate activity may well happen thick and fast at any time, and I view it as the biggest risk after funding the plant.
If there's an aggressive party pushing a JV/merger/takeover, I'd rather have a lawyer over a chemical engineer poking holes in the deal.
As it stands, Simon would find himself dealing with such issues on his own.
It's not a problem, I'm just saying it isn't the choice I would have liked.
Anyway, we'll see.
Cheers
DEG Price at posting:
12.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)