For what its worth, I have spoken to the CEO in the past. The...

For what its worth, I have spoken to the CEO in the past. The impression I got of him was that he is very entrepreneurial, positive and high energy. However, it seemed like he was very new to the markets. When I spoke to him I had a sneaky suspicion that he was on a very steep learning curve in the ASX. When I walked away from the convo I had a good think about it and this was my conclusion:

From our perspective we are looking at companies each day, trying to find the best indicators of a good company - one of which is the CEO buying into the company in significant amounts. This is all well and good when you look at it on paper, but in reality there is more nuance to life. In my view, the CEO is a retailer entrepreneur. He is a young bloke who worked his way up through various companies to get to where he is. His working path has demonstrated high energy, and being in the retail space, it suggests there is a bit of an obsession with his job. Its the first ASX company he has been CEO of. He is clearly new to the finance world and the expectations of investors. If I was to put myself in his shoes, I would be considering my LTI to be enough investment in the company ($500k) once it is achieved. As with every other Sydney sider, I would probably be looking at paying down a mortgage (assuming he has one) with the cash that was coming in before I looked at investing anything further. Keeping in mind that this is also the first time I was achieving such a salary.

I think the above is a more realistic view, and I would suggest the majority of us would be making the same decision.

In my view, the CEO is a worker and gets energy from solving problems. He struck me as someone who didn't switch off from his job. I just didn't get the feeling his focus was on the markets and investing, rather, he seemed to have a hyper focus on the business.

I think at the end of the day though, we want the CEO to have a lot of shares because it aligns them to other shareholders and it creates appropriate incentives that drives the business well. I think all of those things are being achieved on a CEOs first year in an ASX company. His reputation and money is already at stake. I am comfortable he is aligned. I also preference his energy and obsession with solving retail problems above on market purchases. When he gets some more money behind him in a couple years, I might start questioning his shareholder position.