Forum Archive Index - September 2001

["George Hill" <ghill@buzzavox.com>]

Title: Message

Today's NZ Herald has a fair summary of yesterday's meeting. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/businessstorydisplay.cfm?storyID=213070&thesection=business&thesubsection=markets&thesecondsubsection=sharemarket&thetickercode=ITC 

 

The resolutions were subject to a poll (i.e. vote), rather than the Chairman's suggested 'show of hands' voting method. This meant that the results weren't available when I left at 4.20pm (meeting started at 1pm). However the Herald reports that they were overwhelmly carried, presumeably by the Chairman's proxies. Several shareholders raised pertinent and specific questions relating to the Board's performance, which were (IMHO) left largely unanswered. However I'm sure that the message got through that most of those present felt the Board's governance could be improved.

 

That said, the presentations at the end of the afternoon by representatives of DVI, Golden Ord, Terabyte and Virtual Spectator were impressive. (It had been the Chairman's intention to have these presentations as part of his opening address, but they were rescheduled to later, after the official business, in deference to the reason that most people were there: to vote on the resolutions, and question the Board and CEO) 

 

DVI is clearly still in a very early stage of development, but I was left particularly optimistic about it's place in ITC's portfolio. And it was also pleasing to see some synergies starting to emerge between the 4 companies e.g. Terabyte becoming Golden Orb's first NZ distributor, and incorporating Virtual Spectator content to the Team Newscorp (www.teamnewscorp.com) Web site. 

 

It did also occur to me as I drove away from this AGM that publicly-listed venture capital companies are almost a contradiction in terms: the time horizen needed for successful VC investments is in the order of years, c.f. the very short term (days, or even hours) of a public stock market.

 

The company has some real issues to address, most notably the disproportionate ratio of admin expenses to funds under management.

However they're done a pretty good job in picking their portfolio companies: all four that remain look worthwhile investments for ITC, and the selection of Exonet proved a smart one. We'll have to wait to find out why due diligence didn't pick up the sudden evaporation of Streamlinks prospective revenue - if we ever find out. But all in all, I'm left optimistic as a result of the AGM and plan to hang on to my shareholding.

 

George Hill

 

Discl: Hold ITC

 

-----Original Message--
From: owner-sharechat@sharechat.co.nz [mailto:owner-sharechat@sharechat.co.nz] On Behalf Of tonysw
Sent: Friday, 31 August 2001 9:08 a.m.
To: sharechat@sharechat.co.nz
Subject: [sharechat] ITC

Any news from AGM?????????