The AACo AGM was held in Brisbane on Friday 12th June. Shareholders voted in 4 new Directors and re-elected the most recent appointee, Stephen Lonie, who is now Chairman of the AACo board. Former directors now reinstated are Nick Burton-Taylor and Chris Roberts, along with IFFCO’s representative Arunis Paliulis and cattleman Peter Hughes (who was part of the Nebo consortium that bought Stanbroke Pastoral Company from AMP, in 2003, despite offering a lower price than the AACo).
It has been said by some that shareholders voted the longest standing board members off due to dissatisfaction with poor financial results. However it seems infinitely more likely that investors aren’t that stupid or impatient; and that their voting decision was because they disagreed with recent board decisions. Top of the list of this year’s questionable decisions, was the previous board’s intention to purchase Tipperary from Alan Myers, and the decision to sell the blue-chip Rockhampton Downs, ending sixty years of Australian Agricultural Company ownership.
The unmissable board ructions date right back to January 2004 when Peter Holmes a Court resigned as CEO of the Australian Agricultural Company. An office had been opened in the Sydney CBD ahead of the 2001 public float of the AACo which was managed with Peter Homes a Court as CEO. In January 2004 (or privately, in December 2003) apparently the board then decided to close the Sydney office, and left Don Mackay as Managing Director, running the AACo Brisbane office. In January 2004 Peter Holmes a Court announced his resignation, stating he did not wish to move his wife and children from Sydney to Brisbane; after living 15 years overseas and relatively recently relocating to Australia from the U.S. This was the start of a pattern that has continued. Ironically, Don Mackay suddenly left the position of AACo Chief Executive in January 2008, when Nick Burton-Taylor was Managing Director, and he took up the position of CEO while a replacement was sought. Then Nick Burton-Taylor was ousted from his position as Chairman of the board in May 2008, when major shareholder Futuris’s Chief Executive, Les Wozniczka, failed to support his re-election.
For a number of years key Australian Agricultural Company management have been suddenly leaving, with ostensibly plausible reasons being given, but with a cloud of unpublicised reasons – most likely true – hanging around. Over the last twelve months, the only change has been that those leaving have been a lot more vociferous about the real reasons why.
From the sidelines, I’d hazard a guess to say the cause is a clash of cultures between those with solid hands-on rural experience and those with straight business experience (who often don’t understand the vagaries of agricultural production, and who do not have a sufficiently long-term approach); plus a fair slab of old boy’s clubbery and ego tripping mixed in. Plus the odd snake in the grass – I know of at least one bloke who is widely believed to have caused the sacking of another well liked, very long serving and extremely experience key AACo employee – in order to climb higher up the tree himself.
I hope this election of a new AACo board brings a new era of stability and sound financial and environmental management to Australia’s second oldest company (after the Bank of New South Wales, now known as Westpac); formed in 1824; and largest owner of Australian cattle stations.
Tags: Pastoral companies