He's allowed his day in court like everyone else, I think it would be hard to find someone with a spare couple million that wants to put it into CLH in its current state, which makes it hard for him to sell. It is un heard of for a publicly listed company to come out swinging against a major shareholder in a letter like that. If you are on the board of an ASX company what you publish has a lot of weight and is expected to have been vetted thoroughly. So for them to say he actively misled shareholders and only serves his own self interest is wrong. His own self interest would be to dump all the shares now, considering his buy in price, but he hasn't because of what that would do to smaller shareholders. So in the interest of all shareholders he wants to create value in the company and that is not achieved by investments in things like fintech startups and complicated arrangements like Balbec that only create short term growth (great for ceo bonuses) but not for long term shareholder value. I attended the last AGM and the board could barely grasp Artificial Intelligence (or how to use their microphones) so I do not see how they suddenly developed an understanding for fintech.
Their approach to collections is old school at best. Consumers these days are at the mercy of their credit ratings, CLH should be approaching those on their books going we can fix your credit rating instantly so you are free to go finance items which meaningfully impact your quality of life and as long as you pay X amount to us a month that rating stays there. This is simple framing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology) We want customers to feel like they are getting something from us in exchange for paying their debts, not that we are just demanding a slice of their paycheck and hey btw it's good to pay off debts. This could start with something as simple as a name change, collection house sounds ominous, from the get go a potential customer is confronted with a company name that entails we are there to take a bite out of their paycheck. A more positive sounding name that implied the company helped people with their unfortunate financial situations would immediately frame the company in a more positive way in a consumers mind. This extends also to the social pressure exerted on these people, to constantly have letters and contact from a company called "collection house" is intimidating and potentially embarrassing, it makes it sound as if you are immediately in the wrong if you are associated with this company, and that is not how we want people to feel. Our message should be that we are here to get your finances on track and that starts with an appropriate name.
Sorry for the grammar errors. Just my 2 cents.
CLH Price at posting:
$1.33 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held