"All members of the Tatts Group board have been directors for between 6 and 7 years. Mr Boon has been a Director of the Company since May 2005, when it first listed on the ASX, and chairman since 2006. He was paid almost $400,000 in 2011-12 but presumably devoted a majority of his time to other less successful public company directorships.
Mr Boon’s public company record deteriorated significantly over the past 12 months. He was a director of Hastie Group from 2005 until it collapsed in May 2012. He was a member of Hastie’s audit and risk committee and the company’s final interim report in February 2012 claimed it had net assets of $234.7 million.
In September 2012 he resigned (sic) as Chairman of the poorly performing PaperlinX Limited, which has destroyed billions of dollars in shareholder value. Unlike with Hastie, where Mr Boon helped steer the company through an initial period of growth and prosperity, Paperlinx was already struggling when Mr Boon first joined the board in 2008 just as the GFC was setting in.
Mr Boon’s record at Toll Holdings has also been mixed, particularly his chairing of the remuneration committee for the past 5 years. Toll’s remuneration report received “against” votes of 31.85% in 2007 and 42.94% in 2008 after shareholders objected to some of the worst excesses in the market, particularly the $55 million payment to executives as compensation for arguably worthless options as part of the Asciano demerger.
The ASA believes in assessing any candidate’s full CV across all public company directorships. Whilst the performance of Tatts has been reasonable under Mr Boon’s leadership, the ASA is troubled by the billions which have been lost at Paperlinx and Hastie and believes Mr Boon’s public company director career should conclude. WOW!!!!
With Tatts moving to Brisbane after losing 5 consecutive Victorian government gambling licence tenders, it is an appropriate time for the company to find a new Chairman to lead it into new fields of operation.
The ASA urges professional proxy advisers and institutional shareholders to take a similar position in order to help create a culture of accountability amongst those who serve as public company directors in Australia."
suX is vindicated.
SRS Price at posting:
5.9¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
