The biggest local float that I personally have been involved...

The biggest local float that I personally have been involved with was Woolworths in May 1993. At the Woolworths float price of $2.45 it offered a fully franked yield of 4.9 per cent to the investors.
The so called experts were dumbfounded at this approach.
19,000 staff were given priority via a generous employee SPP. Small public investors were informed of the opportunity by a very carefully focused marketing campaign. We went straight to the Public and were massively oversubscribed.
At that time it was the biggest float ever on the the ASX.
Woolies was by no means a sure thing having had to go through several years of lean times but a new mangement team took over in the mid 80's and started to turn the ship away from the rocks. There were only battle hardened ''hands on'' management in those meeting rooms as they developed a new strategic plan, severely flattened the management structure and agressively went after sales and building new stores and renovating the existing ones. During this time the ''Fresh Food People'' campaign was installed.Every single manager in the company, irrespective of position, had to undergo a quick crash course in running the in store fresh food departments. They had to get their hands dirty and personally serve the customers. Many, many other examples of how the change of pace and urgency was instilled back into Woolies.

Our problems with CR at IVZ is that there appears to be no ''street smarts'' when it comes to finance and the retaining of really below average advice in CR and marketing.

It is an urgent matter to fix those problems now. They are not problems to steer away from and just hand over to some average consultants and brokers. Its off your desk, thank heavens. Wrong mind set. You have to personally do the hard yards and get in there and learn this stuff. It is a critical part of your job as a director.