Ann: Special Dividend, page-59

You’ve got to be a very very vindictive person as a retail holder to go digging through company records going back 18 years to prove some sort of point whilst completely overlooking that Mr Billis has successfully built this company up over the last 30 plus years since before it was listed in May 1989. Show me another director of any other listed company with this level of longevity and this level of commitment to creating shareholder wealth. I’ve dug out some old share certificates from 1994/95 and there is his signature right there in the corner, never went away, saw it all the way through and I’m sure that he will be seeing it through for as long as he is able.

We should be applauding him not jumping up and down like babies. It’s just the Australian tall poppy syndrome at work, an unusual and regrettable trait that we have in this country and in one individuals case I can only image it has been driven because they have missed out, probably rotated into BDR around May 2016. That’s the only reason I can come up with for this unusual and ungrateful vendetta we are witnessing on this public forum. Maybe they should be directing their anger towards the master of their own misjudgment, themselves, instead of taking it out on Mr Billis.

Where is the indignation for what’s happened in the last weeks with many gold stocks? Shorters illegally using information about ETF rebalancing to front run the fall in gold stocks, not the first time it has happened. Why aren’t the same people whinging about all the free performance shares that directors all over the ASX are giving themselves or all the pump and dump situations you see on ASX every second day of the week where small retailer shareholders, with little experience, get burnt by the insiders or companies that fudge quarterly reports, sucking investors in, only to find out later the devil is in the detail? Why are these people fixated with a person who has created wealth for all that have cared to back his judgement? You didn’t have to invest if you thought there was something inappropriate going on. That’s what I call hypocrisy, double standards. People who invest in something they believe is inappropriate, take profits from that same situation, then have the gall to go on a witch hunt against the inappropriate behaviour. Talk about broken moral compasses.Esh