What is it about publicly listed media companies which causes them to be some of the least cooperative or transparent when running their annual general meetings?
On Wednesday, emerging Australian and New Zealand radio and sports franchise company Sports Entertainment Group (SEG) held what it called a virtual AGM at 3pm. However, as a cost-saving measure, it used only share registry provider Computershare for its online voting component and offered its 787 shareholders a separate company-run zoom meeting for the AGM.
SEG is capitalised at $25 million and chairman Craig Coleman was in Perth where it has just completed its most recent basketball acquisition after paying rich lister Jack Bendat $8.5 million for the Perth Wildcats.
CEO and 20% shareholder Craig “Hutchy” Hutchison, the former journalist and long-time host of Footy Classified on Nine who was paid $928,901 in 2021-22, beamed in like the television host he is from the offices of SEG’s radio station SEN in Melbourne.
As instructed, I followed the prompts and started lodging these seven written online questions shortly after the zoom AGM commenced. The person in control of the zoom call from an SEG account messaged that the questions would be dealt with later in the meeting. All good.
Lo and behold, once the formal business had been deal with, Hutchy was introduced to deliver his flashy slide show. Coleman then asked if there were any questions, was told there were none and the meeting was summarily shut down after a perfunctory 23 minutes. Despite loud complaints on Twitter, no one from the company has subsequently apologised or explained what happened.
With this sort of behaviour, is it any wonder proxy advisers and their institutional clients are routinely voting down proposed constitutional amendments at public AGMs that would allow for virtual-only AGMs.
When someone stands up at a physical AGM and tries to ask a question, you can’t deny them that right — although the Murdochs go close if you listen to this recent Lachlan Murdoch recitation of the rules at the November 3 Fox Corp AGM. Individual shareholders who made it into the Zanuck Theatre inside the Fox Studios lot in Los Angeles were each restricted to one question lasting one minute for the entire meeting. No wonder the whole Fox meeting lasted only 23 minutes, just like the SEG AGM.
Meanwhile, back in Australia, other media companies have also been curtailing debate and transparency at their AGMs.
Yesterday it was the News Corp-controlled REA Group, whose chairman Hamish McLennan point blank refused to publish an archived copy of the AGM debate for any of its 25,000 shareholders who weren’t able to make the 9am start. Here is the text of my 11 written online questions lodged during the REA AGM, most of which weren’t read out in full.
However, at least REA Group did offer shareholders a hybrid meeting, so online voting and live online questions were possible.
The same can’t be said for combative billionaire Kerry Stokes who fronted a physical AGM of Seven West Media at Eveleigh in Sydney’s inner west yesterday. With online questions banned, I appointed a proxy, Callum Foote, who was the only speaker at the meeting and you can read his account of what happened when Stokes approached him after the meeting. It was also covered in the Nine newspapers.
And speaking of the old Fairfax papers, yesterday’s smorgasbord of media AGMs included a hybrid gathering of shareholders in Nine Entertainment, where chairman Peter Costello held court in Sydney.
Unlike Seven West Media’s physical-only meeting, which was webcast live but with no promise of subsequent access to the archive, shareholders in Nine could pitch live online questions, so these 11 written questions were duly lodged.
Seven were dealt with, the two on gambling advertising and Costello’s $300,000 James Packer lobbying fee were addressed by other shareholders on the floor, and two were ignored.
Costello was invited to launch into Stokes for spending more than $10 million funding the various Ben Roberts-Smith legal battles against Nine and the federal government, but instead suggested an approach by him to Stokes would potentially amount to cartel conduct.
Costello refused to be drawn on whether he will retire at the end of his three-year term at next year’s AGM after a decade on the Nine board, but was given a glowing report card by fellow independent director Samantha Lewis. I reckon he’s pushing hard to go again, particularly after seeing off chief internal rival and former Fairfax chairman Nick Falloon.
As for the $300,000 he pocketed from Packer, Costello once again claimed it was for mergers and acquisition advice to Packer’s private company CPH, not lobbying for Crown Melbourne.
As Packer has previously told Crikey, the billionaire believes this is rubbish. Packer claims there was no mergers and acquisition advice provide to CPH, so if Costello wants to repent for his trip into the world of casino lobbying, perhaps he should repay the $300,000 he pocketed for just 11 months on the Packer payroll in 2011-12.
Australia’s longest-serving treasurer can certainly afford it, because he’s on one of those generous pre-Latham indexed parliamentary pensions, enjoyed a 10% lift in his Nine chairman’s fee from $340,000 to $374,000 as of January, and owns 301,786 Nine shares worth $614,643 based on last night’s closing price of $2.04.
However, to his credit, at least Nine doesn’t shirk from publishing an archive of its high quality AGM video webcast and last year it went one better and produced this first AGM transcript.
The Murdochs, Stokes and Hutchy’s SEG certainly don’t do that.
