Smoke, Mirrors and Half Yearly, page-30

I don¹t know why there is all of this dialogue here on the character of Guy Maine and the new chairman.

Did everyone miss the fact that the former chairman, who half the people on this forum seem to love, traded on the Friday before their results cameout? His statement of holdings clearly shows him selling shares on the Friday before their announcements came out on the Monday, and whether he was a director at the time is irrelevant isn¹t it??? He was a director and therefore in a restricted period until the results came out. Maybe I’m not reading it correctly but that’s the way it seems.

Then you should consider the destruction to our share price, caused entirely by the same former chairman. It’s well known that he was sending emails to shareholders and calling shareholders, absolutely denigrating the CEO and seeking support to oust him and take his job. This went on for days and days.

He was both chairman and director at that time and his role in those positions is to act in the best interests of shareholders. If he thought a new CEO was needed then there is a process to be followed - fire the CEO, undertake a search process, have the board appoint a new CEO and soon, but torching the CEO with shareholders and aiming to destroy his reputation is not the way to do it. Completely and utterly unprofessionaland unbecoming of any director and his/her fiduciary responsibilities.

So when you feel a moment of sympathy for the former chair, just rememberthat a week before he started his campaign against the CEO, and ultimately the rest of the board, our shares were 30pc+ higher than theyare today.

He himself torched about $7m of his own money playing this as poorly as he did. What a great investment strategy. Yes he made a lot of money too but that’s no excuse for burning $7m...and allegedly he had called others to let them know he was dumping his stock, while still a director!

I don’t believe any harassing or threatening text messages were sent to the former chairman or his wife. I think that’s just rubbish. And these nutso conspiracy theories about people having affairs - also mindless rubbish from someone jumping to the most base of conclusions. Why did theCEO send one at 12am....maybe because his boss (chairman) who only two weeks prior was telling the market what a great job he was doing was now actively shafting him and maybe, just maybe, that would have been a pretty stressful week for him. Stupid move from the CEO either way but before people post about affairs, maybe there’s a far simpler answer. And maybe you’d want to ask the former chairman how many emails and texts he sent out at all hours of the night and morning...

I hope ASIC digs into the share trades and I hope the AICD and the media digs into his many and varied communications with shareholders during theweek, which are out there for them to discover any time they wish to. They probably wont because there is bigger fish to fry out there but it would be interesting. Maybe Slater and Gordon picks this up as a classaction so shareholders can see who caused this loss of value?

All of that craziness aside, this is the same company that it was three weeks ago but at one point it was worth half the value. It will be just fine and continue to do well with the current team in place and represent great value for long term conviction investors. Of the 9m shares traded there was demand for twice that, so whilst folks on here want to talk about affairs, which is disrepectful to all parties, including the wife of the former chairman, some very large funds were happy to increase their position in the company, so they were obviously convinced that this was a blip on a long term radar and they were prepared to back the CEO and new Chair. These guys are professional investors, not day traders.. Running massive funds. I’ll back in their judgement versus someone telling me to sell because of their own conspiracy theories that they have no evidence for. I hope the fund managers and institutional shareholders are right, but if the CEO and team doesn’t deliver, and expectations are high, then that’s what the new Chairman and board are there to manage and I hope they do it professionally!!