If Gerry hasn’t got the patience for public company process and regulation – let alone etiquette – isn’t it time he coughed up the cash and took his freak show private?
As ever, Harvey Norman’s annual general meeting on Wednesday was a categorical, unalleviated freak show. In pre-prepared remarks, chairman Gerry Harvey asked board candidate Stephen Mayne: “Are you a sexual predator?” The obscene allegation is, of course, beneath reply. Chief executive Katie Page made a show of elbowing her husband as if to curtail such lunacy, but she’d been peddling the same attack line in investor meetings.
The Corporations Act affords “reasonable opportunity” for shareholders to question a public company board at an AGM. As his troupe of related and affiliated mouth-breathers chuckled away abreast of him, Gerry handpicked mostly friendlies from the floor.
Loading...
Joe Aston is the founder of Rampart and the best-selling author of The Chairman’s Lounge: The inside story of how Qantas sold us out. From 2012 to 2023, Joe helmed The Australian Financial Review’s Rear Window column. Email Joe at hello@rampart.news
