the richard cottee blog, page-18

I think we all need to remember some very important words in RC’s first blog post: “as I am legally able”.

We might not be able to get all the answers on a silver platter. I suspect talking specifically about Board deliberations is one of the things RC won’t legally be able to do. There was an article in the SMH on October 21 which was pretty informative: http://www.smh.com.au/business/cottee-still-baffled-by-his-swift-exit-from-nexus-20111020-1macy.html

From that article:

“Now Cottee has taken on the company. He has launched action in the Victorian Supreme Court seeking a declaration that clauses attached to his contract which restrain him from obtaining new employment are void and unenforceable.”

If that’s the case, there’s an ongoing employment law case and RC would have legal advisors going over his every word to make sure that case isn’t compromised.

Getting back to the issues about Echuca Shoals and Crux and the resignation:

"The board clearly did not have confidence in me," he told BusinessDay yesterday. "And if the board does not have confidence in you when you are trying to make a deal complete, with all the complexity attached to it, the chances are that you become an impediment.

"I believe the board's view is that I was becoming an impediment. They were wanting to make sure that they could second-guess every minutiae in the judgment that, really, management has to make."

Cottee quit Nexus after just 16 months because he says the board asked him to push harder on particular aspects of a complex deal when he knew those proposed terms were so utterly unacceptable to the outside party that whole deal would fall over.

"There was a matter that had been going on for a while that I thought was essential to the company and to the shareholders' interests," Cottee said. "They asked me to go back to the counterparty for the second time. I had advised them beforehand that the counterparty would not accept it, and I was right."