Ann: Trading Halt, page-18

Thanks Proxylady, more than happy to be corrected by more detailed knowledge.

I have to speculate on these things to a large extent, I would believe your explanation - certainly on PPI which was $140m and a big deal.

We are all susceptible to hubris though when we are making and we feel that we are making money (though we may be gambling), me as well as you and Andrew Buckley. The best investors or corporate managers even more so when things go well.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiyytilvNvfAhVNEXAKHWVBBfwQzPwBegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.couriermail.com.au%2Fbusiness%2Fcardno-caminosca-corruption-probe-how-qlds-leading-engineering-firm-was-entangled%2Fnews-story%2Fe112f05180b99655e5afd7a862e8bac1&psig=AOvVaw3p19z_f5pl9C5Gd9ofR45k&ust=1546943646771083&cshid=1546857178860

We also tend to attribute in others aspects which relate  to ourselves. If the above article was true then it's perhaps praise for Andrew if he trusted Caminosca. It takes a crook to catch a crook.

I never heard him say I made a mistake and I am sorry;

that may seem like a lot to ask but I say it all the time. It  seems very rare though that people are too proud to be wrong and laugh at themselves. I think no corporate executive ever admits a mistake and that makes them pathetic in my eyes.

For me as an investor though I foster an antithetical attitude to things, I don't like corporations, I don't admire managers, I do see the corruption and the stink and it appalls me.

I like frauds and scams and at the moment, selling short is the way foward because they are a dime a dozen. It's a natural place for an anarchist - stepping on the oxygen hose of worthless corporations run by stock promoters.

Do you think Crescent has imposed austerity on the staff because their statements give me the impression they are investing a lot in the business and that the restructuring was early on. Although recently there have been more issues I understand.

Crescent were motivated as an outside party to cast out the skeletons and to write off assets to make future profitability easier. Easy to criticize the previous regime. They were incentivised to make up skeletons and find where all the bodies are buried so I think they have but there are no guarantees.

I am sure that they are like every corporate bean counter gnome I have met. I am sure the restructuring has been bodged like every restructuring I have seen, that the good people left and the deadwood remain.

Its compounded by the employee shareholder thing, we are affected by a low share price as well as a high one. To think that things are worse than they are.

Yet for all the mismanagement companies survive and are better investments when a low price is paid - CDD is no different. Can you separate the sentiment around the stock price and the fact that a lot of good people have left from a rational appraisal of what the business is worth?

Is it something that people aren't aware of and aren't already pricing in or are they pricing it in multiple times.

I think if Crescent were paying a dividend this may be a slightly different discussion. The new CEO should not be a hatchet man, they have 4 and 8 year options recently granted.

As private equity Cresecent are pump and dump scammers but also taking a reasonably long term view.

As to the price of oil - a very interesting and misunderstood subject. None of the risk committees in any of the companies exposed saw it coming and neither did I.

Difference is I never buy anything when things are doing well, only after the sheet has hit the fan - in the following  4 years I have given the subject much thought and observed developments with great interest.

Risk committees by definition do not understand risk (volatility is opportunity) and cannot make good investment decisions (which are necessarily away from consensus).

You cannot understand risk without scarcity, that's fundamental to functional capitalism. The risk committees were paid a comfortable salary either way and didn't have the experience of skin in the game.

The employees of Cardno bore the consequences of their stupid risks without being consulted on their stupid decisions. If they had been on the committee perhaps  a different set of decisions.

I am holding Andrew Buckley to a higher standard than anyone else because asking is maybe showing you aren't perfect. No one is, more you ask more you learn.

Risk is not from the risk committee it is from I better not borrow too much or I may lose the house. The control men don't understand risk, it can't be measured and controlled it has to be embraced.

Like they do with nature, endless control through quantification means you fail to see the essence - that it has value beyond money. & That your control was a complete illusion, your significance minimal.

I am concerned about climate change, we are going to see a big spike in the price of oil which I will profit from as I don't need to wait for the risk committee but make my own decisions with my own money. Coming as the boomers retire and stock market is at extremes of overvaluation - the risk of a meltdown is something else they can't see.

They can't see anything beyond their narrow ideology IMO.

PPI was a bad decision I wouldn't have made so I am in a position to judge and this is not inconsistent with Andrew being intelligent and an excellent people person.

I wouldn't want to build up a large business like he did but I guess it's a kind of achievement.

Thanks for your thoughts I am interested in your view on how badly the business has been damaged - I certainly think there is a lot. How badly are the big consultancies

like Jacobs run though, still they survive and thrive - pay for Steve's NBA feeder team.

My guess is that CDD is the same but it's just that a guess. That's what I want to be - always uncertain always open minded to contradictory evidence.

GLTA