A.G.M.

I'm wondering if any H.C. posters attended yesterday's A.G.M. and could fill us in on what may or may not have transpired at the meet. I have attended a couple of years in the past but could not make it this time.

After reading through the Chairman's statement, the presentation and the results, a couple of points/observations come to mind. We are told about pipelines and corridors and platforms and channels and deployments - all very nice sounding commercial jargon. The presentation then says of deployments that there are 255 services now live across 89 countries. That's OK but in the Chairman's statement this advises "The number of sending countries today is 233, which compares to a total of 99 sending countries only three months ago" That's a big jump in a short space of time and considering the UN recognises 195 Sovereign States, The Olympic Nations tally is 205, and FIFA (World Football) has 209 eligible countries. However, the International Standard Codes tally is 249 which apparently includes some breakaway states not elsewhere recognised. So 233 for ESV is a tremendous number for the company to boast - maybe it should be 133 with a typo to blame. Seems out of wack to me. Something to check I would think.

The remuneration report was not passed and proxy voting lodged showed 66.9 million against and 34.0 million in favour, so it could be assumed some large shareholders aren't very happy at the moment. The loss of this resolution was not elaborated upon. At the time of posting this the share price has slipped 9 cents (or 18%) from its overnight close, maybe due to a lack of support that appears to be shown.

Last month, the financial press was critical of management for not elaborating upon any background for Mr Palol Montessori stepping down as Chief Executive and M.D. some weeks ago. Well, the Chairman must not have read the press article, or chose to ignore it, as in his Chairman's Statement it was simply stated that Mr Montessori had stepped down and a search was in process for a replacement. So much for public relations.

I sold off some of my holding twelve months ago, bit sorry now I didn't sell more.

MM