PolyNovo chair David Williams departs in what company spins as a ‘planned succession’

David Williams in one of his more amusing moments when claiming he was under media attack. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

So, David Williams has finally buggered off. The PolyNovo chairman resigned on Monday after a year-long carnival of scandal and share-price obliteration that should have seen any board member with a pulse march him out the door in February, when they were supposed to. But no, we had to wait. Had to endure a needless pantomime of Williams trying to keep his job.

And even now, right to the very end, the board couldn’t help but publish one last steaming pile of corporate nonsense.

Read the market statement issued by PolyNovo on Monday and you’d actually think Williams’ departure was somehow ordained, carefully thought out and all part of the company’s “previously announced succession plans and governance review, in line with the company’s ongoing commitment to board renewal”.

Do they think we’re idiots? They must think we’re idiots. Which is fine because we think they’re weasels.

They’ve taken the truth of what’s happened, fed it into a fact-bending machine and let it cough up a hallucination worthy of Pynchon.

David Williams spruiks for re-election votes.

No, says the company. Ignore the fact Williams was clinging to power. Nothing at all to do with share price decimation. He didn’t capitulate to insurmountable pressure to resign but instead, yes, it was all “succession”, all announced, this graceful dismount … from a job he was supposed to lose months ago.

We know because we broke the story. We revealed two barristers, Philip Crutchfield KC and Katherine Brazenor, had been engaged by PolyNovo late last year to investigate bullying allegations and a host of other claims against Williams. Some of these were substantiated.

Crutchfield and Brazenor recommended Williams step down and the board accepted the advice. The head of PolyNovo’s audit and risk committee, Andrew Lumsden, acknowledged this fact in an email dated February 19.

But there was no resignation – not for Williams, anyway. Instead, the CEO that complained about him got the arse. The board sat on its hands, did nothing about Williams; he stayed put, endured the headlines. And then, two weeks ago, he posted a photograph of himself to LinkedIn begging for votes to keep him in the role.

“Polynovo (sic) AGM voting closes soon,” he wrote, somehow managing to misspell the name of his own company. “I need your votes! So please dig out your proxy form and vote today!”

Do these sound like the words of a man selflessly manoeuvring to the exit for the “succession plans”? Williams was clinging to his job by the fingernails while four of the five directors on PolyNovo’s board – all with longstanding professional ties to Williams, who hired them – either actively protected him or, at the very least, looked away while the shop went up in flames (causing wounds that no amount of NovoSorb could possibly treat).

Shareholders paid the price, of course. The company traded at $2.30 at the start of 2025. It closed at $1.345 on Monday, a 50 per cent wipe-out. The board’s prevailing concern has always been that dumping Williams would tank the share price further. In fact it rose about 4 per cent on the news of his departure. That’s the shareholder equivalent of popping bottles.

Williams left because the walls were closing in. Proxy adviser CGI Glass Lewis told investors to vote against his re-election, citing the alleged bullying, the governance failures, the trading violations (all revealed here in this column). In its note of October 4, it said Williams had not “demonstrated the integrity, accountability and governance discipline expected of an ASX 300 board leader”. Let us translate the corporate speak for you: his goose was cooked.

Institutional Shareholder Services made the same recommendation. JP Morgan, State Street, Vanguard and Fidelity International were lining up to cast their ballots against him along the same lines. Only Dean Paatsch’s Ownership Matters didn’t recommend against Williams, though Paatsch declined to go into the reasons why. “I will pass up that incredible opportunity,” he said. We’re sure he stands by the decision.

All of which is to say that none of this needed to happen. The directors could have acted a year ago when the barristers delivered their verdict. Instead the board dithered, watched the company burn.

But sure, let’s call it “succession planning”. Let’s pretend this was all a grand design. Williams is gone, his enablers survive.

How many of them are fit to run this business, knowing what they let him get away with? Shareholders can ask them all about it at the AGM. It’s on today.