Ann: Appointment of Bob Vassie as Non-Executive Chair, page-13

I am a little surprised. They waited something like four months to fill that vacancy - actually longer than that because the fill in chair who retired four months back would surely have given some sort of notice that he was thinking of pulling the pin. Seems a long time they left the spot open, to me. Though the fact that the new bloke is on the payroll from 1 January suggests that they have been working on this appointment for a while.

I had thought they may be holding back the appointment as they worked towards some sort of corporate activity: not uncommon for the corporate predator to retain most of the positions but throw the corporate prey a bone, such as keeping on the chair or a couple of non-executive directors. The other option I considered was that Mark Zeptner might get recognised for his contributions to developing the company in the last 4 or so years by getting the gig as executive chairman (a la the set-up at both Northern Star and Evolution).

The thing that immediately caught my attention in this announcement is that Bob Vassie only retired as MD of St Barbara earlier this year so would still have an insider's understanding of the operations and potential of their three mining camps, the processing plant at Leonara has heaps of spare capacity for at least the next few years, then there is one in Canada (Ramelius has longed looked for something in North America) and one in PNG (yeah don't know about that one). SBM seems similar to Ramelius in market size, bigger in ounces produced but has a net negative cash position whilst Ramelius has heaps of cash idling around. But I know nothing about SBM so any informed rebuttal of my musings would be welcomed.

If Vassie has not been brought on with an eye on a corporate link-up with St Barbara then I would want him to be fairly passive. I am happy with the level of control that Mark Zeptner has been given by the previous board set up and with how he has handled himself. I would not want the new chair to crowd MZ too much: I would rather lose the new chair then lose Zeptner.