Saturday, March 3, 2012

Honey, do you remember I briefly mentioned to you…

I am going to sell the house, the ute and give the cat away?

Bryan Mogridge
I was reviewing some of PGC’s chairman Mr Bryan Mogridge’s public statements recently and came across this statement he made in his presentation at last year’s AGM in November.

At the SGM on May 18th I addressed shareholders briefly and said that we would conduct a strategic review of PGC and report at this Annual shareholders’ meeting” 

Mr Mogridge then went ahead and explained that the board reversed a major part of “the plan”, which is to negate or put on hold indefinitely the decision to return the non-core holdings to shareholders. 

That language reminded me of the kind I would use when I was a boy and was trying to sneak one past Mom, “Excuse me Mom? You do not recall back in May, when I said…”

I thought it was time to ask around. The people that decided to put some effort behind keeping an eye on PGC’s board digested a lot of information regarding Pyne Gould, Marac, PGG Wrightson and what is now Heartland over the years, so there is substantial Pyne Gould “memory” with them. They also do all the work and all credit goes to them. I get the nice emails and of course the not so nice ones with words like “libel” in them, but that is material for another post.

What is interesting, with some speculation on my part, is that when we looked into it we discovered some history behind that statement. You see it was shortly before the AGM that investors started pushing the board to stick to their official plan which they have been advertising to investors on every occasion they got. Investors basically said to the board, stick to the plan! The plan was simple and was repeated over and over by the board of PGC and went along the lines of we are focussing on the wealth management business and distributing the Heartland and PGG Wrightson shares and excess cash which and I quote “are surplus to core business requirements going forward”. On occasion the board did say it might buy more Heartland shares with the cash, but in that case, it said, it will then be returning those shares to PGC Shareholders

The Pyne Gould “memory bank” argued that this statement was a reaction to shareholders pushing publically for the board to stick to the original plan and nobody could remember any of this “NEW” strategic review that was mentioned when the chairman briefly addressed shareholders at the SGM.
 
We invite the good people at Pyne Gould or anyone else to kindly email us a copy of the transcript of SGM at transparency6@gmail.com 

Nobody is able to recall any mention of this “NEW” strategic review and all evidence point that the above statement was made in reaction to shareholder demanDs to stick to the original plan. 

The evidence we are talking about is that the plan was touted for many, many years. Let us revisit what Pyne Gould chairman, Mr Mogridge wrote in his letter to shareholders in the latest Pyne Gould annual report. 

“The past year saw the completion of the second phase of the three stage process begun in 2009, for the reconstruction of PGC following the devastating impact of the global financial crisis upon the business. The first phase involved the recapitalisation and stabilisation of PGC. The second saw the separation of the financial service business suitably enhanced in size and skills in order to be position and capable of successfully applying for a banking license. The third phase is to grow PGC’s remaining wealth management businesses around a solid Australasian base”  

The above will be familiar to followers of the Pyne Gould story, because the board has been spinning this story, since 2009 and it originally started with an extensive strategic review, another word the board used a lot. The main issue to grasp is that the context in which these promises were made to shareholders was not “by the way”, but in the context of an extensive strategic review of which the results were repeated over and over. 

Jeff Greenslade
For evidence and details on the strategic review or as Jeff Greenslade put it, “a major strategic review” since 2009 look here and here and here and here and here and here and  you can Google the rest. The last official communication of the 2009 strategic plan was of course the prospectus published on 29 April 2011

So this, Mr Mogridge, is what the people that make up the Pyne Gould “memory bank” do not understand. The “three stage process begun in 2009 and was the result of “a major strategic review” and you repeated it many times as you did as late as 29 April 2011 and then what? A mere three weeks later on 18 May 2011 you “addressed shareholders briefly and said that we would conduct a" "NEW" "strategic review of PGC”??
 
After weighing the evidence before me I stand unconvinced, but it is nothing that a copy of the transcript of the SGM cannot settle.  
As I said, please feel free to email us a copy at transparency6@gmail.com  
Otherwise we will take this for what it seems to us; the board trying to sneak one past the shareholders.


Sometimes, when I walk the farm it is just the slightest whiff, the kind that you are not sure whether you imagined, that will put you on the trail to eventually find a dead animal. That statement is what I call a whiff and my experience taught me that when you get it you follow the scent. There is more to that statement that meets the eye….time for the "memory bank" to start digging!!!!

Cheerio,
jA

Anderson Cooper once said, I think it's a good thing that there are bloggers out there watching very closely and holding people accountable. Everyone in the news should be able to hold up to that kind of scrutiny. I'm for as much transparency in the newsgathering process as possible.


2 comments:

  1. Loving your work. About time light was shone on this sordid affair. What rights the shareholder with a board like this??

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unfortunately we are all fighting a lost cause. Shareholders have been duped but Kerr does not care about minorities

    ReplyDelete