AMP AGM (2003)

Details
Company: AMP Limited
Type: Annual General Meeting
Date: 15 May 2003
Chairman: Peter Wilcox (independent)
CEO: Andrew Mohl

Pre-AGM
My second AGM, also the most heated I have been to. This was at the height of the scandals at AMP and there were some heated debates on the floor. Some 800 people attended, from memory, but many left during the meeting and only 200-300 were left at the end (which was about 5 hours later). I saw some faces which looked familiar: Peter Morgan from 452 Capital as well as Ali Moore and Ross Greenwood from Business Sunday.

Questions and Voting
I was planning on asking 2 questions, but did not. One was on the renumerations package, which was pulled before the meeting. The other was in relation to why the chairman had decided to vote all open proxies against Stephen Mayne, which he explained during his chairman's address. So I didn't end up asking any questions this time round.

Stephen Mayne was running for election to the board of directors, he was unsuccessful and gained only 11% of the vote. However, even if he had received 51% of the vote he still wouldn't have made it as he needed to get a higher percentage than another candidate and the two candidates with the lowest vote were Lord Killearn (80%) and Richard Grellman (82%).

Voting: I voted for Stephen Mayne, against Richard Grellman and against Lord Killearn. I have a lot of respect for Stephen Mayne and he had stated that voting against these two (who were the chairmen of the finance committee and audit committee during the crisis and should have gone) was the best way to get him onto the board. So I did.

Post-AGM
I got to meet Stephen Mayne - how exciting! I also had a bit of a talk to Justin McMurray, who had replaced Neil Woolrich as Crikey's business reporter following Neil Woolrich's move to the ABC. I mentioned how it's scary having to get up in front of everyone to ask questions and he agreed, pointing out that he had to gather up the courage to do so every time he did it.

Anyway, this still holds the record for the longest and most "lively" AGM I've been to.