Richard Graham email regarding Performance Rights, page-2

Mars,

The manner in which the EBIT targets have been presented (i.e., wrt a FY15 base year) is highly unorthodox and the cynic in me tells me that it is designed that way to confound the less-diligent follower of the company.

Certainly, figures of "10% or 15% compared to base year" certainly come across a far more palatable at first glance than does "~5% pa".

PS. For context, I note that IFM has grown EBIT annual rates of by 8%, 29% and 13% pa over the past 3 financial years, so for the board to actively be designing a remuneration structure around a rate that is waaaaay below recent history begs a lot of questions.

At first pass, it smacks to me to being egregiously generous!

(And besides, a pure EBIT number - in isolation - is not a very useful determinant of shareholder wealth creation (management could simply acquire a whole swathe of EBIT at a silly multiple and they will get to where they want to be.)

I have some form in the past of operating in an activist capacity when the circumstances have warranted it.

To that end, I have built a financial model for IFM but I have not followed the executive travails of the business as well I sense you have.

When you have a moment, could you provide a thumbnail sketch of the sequence of events that led to the company coming to the position it currently finds itself, namely with the good guys seemingly sitting on the outside? I am assuming the founder stepped aside at some stage only to have the board morph into something he today finds incompatible with the interests of the company's shareholders.