And the winners are ...

Friday 14th December 2001

The Shoeshine Awards panel highlights the lowlights of an abysmal year for shareholders

In considering candidates for the McSkimmings S-Bend Award for shareholder wealth disposal judges thought long and hard before dismissing for the supreme accolade Air New Zealand's $1.9 billion Ansett loss. Also meriting serious consideration was Fletcher Challenge Forests' $529 million Central North Island Forests write-off.

But the winner by a generous margin was NGC unit On Energy for the breathtaking stupidity of going into the winter with its electricity needs unhedged. The resulting $339 million blowout may not have been the biggest but quality counts.

Air New Zealand's Ansett fiasco couldn't pass unrecognised. So far only al Qaeda has escaped blame. But for sheer self-interested cowardice and lack of integrity judges had no hesitation in awarding the third annual Caterpillar Tractors Award for heavy duty blame-shifting to the government of Australia, whose delivery of three successive underarm balls to Air New Zealand contributed more than most to Ansett's demise. Their pusillanimity in leaving our prime minister stranded at Melbourne airport defies description.

For the third year in a row, and somewhat predictably, the Tukoroirangi Morgan Medal for Thin-skinned Sensitivity goes to Brierley Investments. Banking on the warm feelings generated by losing only $296 million of shareholders' money this year, directors are once again demanding a fee rise - another $US29,250 a year, to take them to $US204,250 ($498,000). More is to come. The value of the massively diluted Air New Zealand stake, in the June-year books at $156.5 million, is worth just $78 million at current prices.

Judges needed look no further for this year's Preposterous Protestation Prize winner than Econet Wireless, the Johannesburg-based mobile phone wannabe. Having abused the privilege of making "private" submissions to a parliamentary committee by producing bogus charts and dodgy financials slagging off competitor Vodafone, Econet proclaimed it had upheld "the highest ethical and professional standards," proving the adage morality is relative.

There could be no other winner of this year's Robin Hood Ribbon for wealth transfer. By popular acclaim Fisher & Paykel takes the biscuit for its donation of around $90 million of shareholders' wealth to US institutions. Most of the massively discounted Healthcare division shares the Yanks got have already been flicked on. It was all so predictable that fund managers predicted it but F&P, with the unflagging support of Deutsche Bank, soldiered on anyway.

From a dazzling array of nominations judges selected Carter Holt Harvey as the recipient for the Betamax Trophy for the worst business plan. You didn't need an economics PhD to work out where Carter's effort to exert "price leadership" by buying up all its competitors' logs at prices way above market would end - an inventory the size of Wyoming and a much-needed $5 million shaved off the bottom line. Nice one, Jay.

The Light Brigade Trophy for charging ahead regardless of the consequences, judges felt, could go only to Credit Suisse First Boston. By jumping the gun on Lion Nathan's Montana raid, these young fire-eaters cost the brewer its most logical beachhead into the high-growth New World wine sector. For a splendid encore CSFB has turned its back on the New Zealand retail market. Love you, NY.

The Toyworld Little Boy Blue award goes to property developer Andrew Krukziener, who has finally stopped pretending Metropolis bonds are a sound investment. Kruko's business empire now resembles a one-stop wedding shop. Something old (antiques), something new (venture capital), something borrowed (what hasn't he?), and something blue (that would have to be the bondholders).

In a fiercely-contested category the winner of this year's Annus Horribilis Pewter Mug is Wilson Neill Corporation. An assortment of WN's directors past and present have been charged and convicted of white-collar offences. Majority shareholder Transram, a joint venture between the shadowy Hamilton-based Genesis International Charitable Trust and flakey Panama-based WeCU, still hasn't coughed up for its shares. And now creditors are banging at the door clutching statutory demands. Is Eric Watson really backing this dog? No.

Comments from our readers

No comments yet