agm, page-18

Pa2000,

I agree with your sentiments. I presumed from tenor of this message board & NBS's recent history that there would be a significant turn out & the Directors would get some pointed questions. If Ouisa & Co can pontificate about NBS, but not one in this crowd apparently turned up at the AGM to ask any searching questions - or if they did they were silent - so their continuing speculations, even if valid will now have a question mark over them. It was presumably a rare opportunity to be face to face with Johan etc - it was not taken up!

There were a lot of "routine" questions that could be asked - for example, (a) it was now said Directors executive pay would be performance based as previously announced, - what system is going to be used? (b) will there still be a dividend for current financial year?

I was actually very surprised about this & way meeting went. To another poster who suggested there were a dominating presence of security people this was not correct - on this score it did not seem any different to other AGMs I have attended.

I did not get a good count, but I would have said about 24 individuals were at the AGM. From this number take out David Mair, the Auditors & a few "friends" of NBS; the number of independent attendees was in my view unexpectedly low.

I was also surprised the attendees seemed strongly in favour of NBS if the show hands vote was any indication & no one choose to make a point by demanding a poll on Dykes re-election. Incidentally Peter Dykes & rest of Directors must have got message Dykes is not flavour of month because there were about 50m proxy votes against his re-election. I would presume because of the number of no votes a couple of large shareholders have voted against Dykes.

To his credit Johan did say their investor relations/disclosure has been "terrible". However even in the face of general recognition this part of NBS performance was "terrible" the Directors were not really called to account by even the most routine of questions.

I have no idea what NBS Directors might have expected, but they were probably pretty surprised that in the end the AGM was more or less perfunctionary & from their point of view went of without a hitch.

I noted the Directors did not join other shareholders in the side room for a cup of tea afterwards. I thought this was in it self rather stand offish & rather weak public relations - not sure if this is cultural issue or they did not want to get drawn into conversation.

So yes Pa2000 I have decided, whilst not unsympathetic to doubts expressed about NBS, collectively there are parties on this Board that are big on talk & less visible in hard action.

I am not an apologist for NBS, but the fact was shareholders had the opportunity to ask a lot of questions - they simply did not enter the field of play - so an opportunity lost - so why keep asking questions on this Board!?

Maybe its the old story in the long run (perhaps even the short run) we get what we deserve! ;-)

I am now going to duck for cover because no doubt will get a few curt responses. ;-)