Ann: ResMed to Acquire Brightree, page-25

"...once again market opens up in approximately 14hrs if you didn't like what ur incharge do then sale ur shares...option is open for you rather then convincing is that management took wrong decision"

Except that the option of selling my shares which you think is so very open to me will result in the crystallisation of a very significant capital gains tax liability given the fact that I have owned RMD for a large part of investing life.


So thank you for your advice into how I should manage my investments, but if it's all the same to you, I prefer not to have to make payments to the tax office due to events that are not of my own doing.

I'm not sure how you like to invest, but I buy stakes in companies on the basis that I will not be forced to sell them prematurely because the executives of those companies do things that I think are dumb.

In closing, I must say that I am simply amazed that - in suggesting I should just "sell my shares and move on" - you seem to want to stifle any debate around this latest development.

That's why company managers, on balance, make such poor strategic decisions time and time again: because they are not held to account by the owners of the business.

People who invest by merely buying squiggles on a share price chart might indeed just pull up stumps and move on, but people who invest with a business owner mindset care deeply about what happens with their companies.

Resmed might, to you, be just another stock which you flick out of mind by clicking on the SELL button on CommSec.

But to me, Resmed is a business I have owned for a very long time, and it is business that has created significant wealth for its owners. When I think that it is now doing something that is at odds with the cultural DNA of the business, I don't run.
I engage. Like any true business owner should.

But let me direct the question I posed earlier to a general audience, directly to you:

"If this was your private company, and while you were away on holidays and out of reach, the person you left in charge of your company undertook this transaction in your absence, how would you feel about it on your return?"