Forum Archive Index - May 2003

["tennyson@caverock.net.nz" <tennyson@caverock.net.nz>]

Hi Hans,
 
>
> 
> As point of clarification Selwyn Cushing was never a chief executive
> at Electricorp,
>
>

You are correct Hans.  Sir Selwyn was in fact Chairman of the 
Electricorp board at the time.

>
>
>In terms of Cushings comments at the time, I'm sure they weren't
> particularly prescient but reflecting the views of a then monopoly
> organization about to lose its dominant position. And I don't think
> he's been proved right on the electricity market either. I would
> suggest it's a case of too much government owned involvement not too
> little.From that point he may be seen in hindsight to have more misses
> than hits overall.
> 
>

I think the point Cushing was making was that the Electricity industry 
needed an overall plan.   There would have been other ways to achieve 
that apart from retaining Electricorp as a single unit of course.  But I 
hardly think you could say that the deregulated electricity market that we 
ended up with got it right.   How could you have less government 
involvement than we had under the SOE model?

>
>
> In terms of Ron Brierley, I think it's more a question of horses for
> courses. Just because he is good at spotting value opportunities and
> manoeuvring his way through them doesn't make him qualified to chair
> a bank, which he patently wasn't.
>
>

I'm not sure if Sir Ron wasn't used as a bit of a fall guy in the late 
eighties BNZ debacle.   It was some of those high flying deals that sunk 
the BNZ and Sir Ron should have known the kind of risks involved.   
After all, his own company was doing just such deals!

>
> 
> Another interesting case of management is Greg Muir of WHS. My
> prediction would be that WHS performance under his leadership will be
> significantly less than under Stephen Tindall. Admittedly an easy call
> to make based on the current shareprice.
> 
> 

Am interested in this comment.   I'm not sure of the history of Muir, but 
are you saying that because you don't favour Muir *or* because anyone 
appointed after Stephen Tindall would find those boots very difficult to 
fill?

SNOOPY


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