There has been a lot written on this forum about Exec Chairman...

There has been a lot written on this forum about Exec Chairman Homsany; much of it has been quite negative. So as part of doing my diligence about whether to invest I thought I would review his bio and dig a bit deeper.

My first impression was that he is actually very well credentialed.

And he is also very, very busy.

In addition to being full time Exec Chair of Toro, he is Non Exec Chair of Galan Lithium and Redstone Resources as well as Central Iron Resources (TSX) and also Chairman of Health Insurance Fund of Australia (HIF). I know its pretty common for people in this space to hold other non exec positions. But he is also a director of Cardinals Corporate, which seems to be his own legal and financial advisory firm? (He is the Principal of it apparently, so doesn't sound like its a big firm with multiple partners?)

So this begs the question? Is he too busy to commit full time to Toro? Being a full time employee plus non exec chairs plus still running a legal firm that charges clients? If he wasn’t so busy, could he have committed more time to the Toro approvals issue and put that to bed properly?

I must admit I kind of like the idea of having a “man about town” kind of personality who can bring a broad set of relationships to the table. But coming with that is a certain expectation of performance.

And then gets the controversial piece – the dollars. Richard seems to be very well paid.

Last year Toro paid him $538k cash and $593k options. Total $1.1m

Galan paid him $96k plus super so $102k cash. Plus $648k in options. Total $750k

Redstone paid him$66k cash plus 26k options.
Couldn't find anything for Central Iron

HIF fees are not disclosed; but they are a huge place; and they pay a total of $3m to their board and key management personnel. So there is likely to be another couple hundred grand there at least to a Chairman.

Plus there is a sneaky $200k per annum (both last year and 2022 too) for legal and advisory fees paid by Gallan to Cardinal Corporate, the law firm that Richard is the Principal of. I see Toro also paid $160k to Cardinal in 2022, none in 2023.

So all up that seems to be about $900-$1m in cash and $1.2m in options. (i know the options number might not really be real as they do funny accounting value for that)

Which is an astounding amount of money and massive amount of work that Richard is apparently capable of.

My conclusions are: 1, I am in the wrong game! Ha!; and 2. I think Toro would be better served getting someone in as CEO who can actually devote their full attention to the role. And 3.Realign payment structure with performance.

Richard could cleverly announce that he is retaining the non exec chair role; but bring in a young gun CEO (i have seen Siobhan Lancaster mentioned on this thread before, amongst other possibilities?). I reckon the stock would take a pretty decent upward rerate on that news. And then, might entice some new investors on board, like me, who are currently waiting nervously on the sideline.

All FYI and DYOR and GLTAH