Saturday, October 29, 2011

David Jones AGM (2006)

Details
Company: David Jones
Type: Annual General Meeting
Date: 1 December 2006
Chairman: Robert Savage (independent)
CEO: Mark McInnes

Pre-AGM
It had been a while since my last AGM. In fact, I'm not even sure of the date of this AGM (as I'm writing this in 2011 - which also means everything is highly paraphrased), it might have been in 2006 or it might have been in 2007. I think it was in 2006. That made it 12 months since my last AGM, and 18 months since my an AGM where I had asked a question.

David Jones had been performing quite well, so I really had no qualms to raise and planned to mainly give my praise to the board. Though I did have one question ready on expansion plans.

Questions and Voting

Me: Most of Australia's great companies are ones that have expanded overseas to become global companies: Newscorp, BHP, etc. Yet David Jones has remained almost entirely a domestic company. Why hasn't the company considered international expansion?

Robert Savage: The problem for David Jones in doing that is that we rely heavily on our brand. If we were to expand into another market, the local consumers would not trust our brand as much as the local ones. Perhaps it could work if done in partnership, but those sorts of opportunities are hard to come by.

Voting: I have no idea how I voted. Probably for everything, I guess.

Post-AGM

One of the David Jones Senior managers came to chat to me after the AGM about my question. He expanded on what Robert Savage had said and I was happy with both responses. It was also nice to get that extra attention.

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