Annette Sharp: James Dack the latest to leave Magnis Energy Technologies

High-profile executive director James Dack’s departure is the latest in an exodus of senior appointments from Magnis Energy Technologies — and no one is saying why.

What is going on at Australian battery company Magnis Energy Technologies?

That’s the question Sydney’s chattering classes were asking last week following the sudden departure of the company’s high-profile executive director James Dack.

Magnis informed the stock market last Monday that Dack had finished up on Friday, May 7, after a relatively short 11 months with the company.

James Dack when he announced he was joining Magnis Energy. Picture: Liam Driver

In its statement to the ASX, no reason was given for Dack’s departure.

Magnis executive chairman Frank Poullas refused to comment when the question was put to him yesterday.

When approached, the usually chatty Dack, son-in-law to Hungry Jack’s supremo Jack Cowin, also refused to comment.

Sources have told this column Dack who, along with John McGrath in 1989 founded the real estate agency bearing McGrath’s name, has consulted lawyers following his departure from the
energy company.

This column understands he’s not the only company director to consult lawyers after leaving Magnis during the past year.

Another departed director, Frank Houllis, has retained legal firm Slater & Gordon to represent them in a dispute, while a third is understood to have written to the board saying he had lost “confidence” in the company.

Former deputy premier Troy Grant has also quit Magnis.

Non-executive director Warwick Smith is part of the exodus.

Dack joined Magnis Energy in June last year, negotiating a 20,000,000 share incentive into his contract.

The share price was then 7c. It’s currently worth 30c, after climbing to a high of 49c
in April.

In February Dack was still passionately spruiking the business, telling The Sunday Telegraph he felt at Magnis he “ … had a (clean energy) project worth investing my time and effort in”.

News of Dack’s departure follows the departure of several senior company figures.

In February, non-executive director Troy Grant, the former deputy premier and ex-member for Dubbo, resigned after several months during which he was installed as chairman of Magnis’s Audit & Risk Committee.

Earlier this year Magnis Strategic Manager of Batteries Jack Robertson, who joined the lithium-ion battery operation in September 2020, quit.

This followed the “termination” of the business’s CEO, Dr Frank Houllis, understood to be the cousin of top dog Poullas, last August.

Slater & Gordon lawyer Andrew Rich confirmed his firm had commenced proceedings against Magnis on Houllis’s behalf in the Supreme Court over a “breach of contract claim”.

This coincided with the departure of non-executive director Warwick Smith, adviser to media magnate Kerry Stokes and boss of the Morrison government’s National Foundation for Australia-China Relations committee.

Three company secretaries have also left the business during the past year.

Poullas, who last year described Dack as the “missing piece of the puzzle”, said he was unaware of the source of a targeted smear campaign concerning any of Magnis’s departed employees.