Fonterra a slow learner on transparency when it comes to director election information. Photo / File
Fonterra a slow learner on transparency when it comes to director election information. Photo / File
COMMENT:
Two Fonterra directors seeking re-election have at least two competitors - so far.
But in keeping with the embattled dairy company's reputation for being untroubled by prompts for more transparency, we have to rely first on Mr Google or dairy farmer chatter to learn about them, or what theyaspire to bring to the top table of New Zealand's biggest company.
A brief advisory from the Fonterra Shareholders' Council - the advocate for Fonterra's farmer-owners that costs them $3 million to run each year - has informed that a Philipp Haas and Cathy Quinn had passed muster as "independently assessed candidates" for the 2019 Fonterra farmer-director election.
They will contest two vacancies created by incumbent farmer-directors Donna Smit and Andy Macfarlane who are required to quit or seek re-election under rotation rules. Smit and Macfarlane have confirmed they will seek re-election. All four have been assessed by an independent panel of experienced directors.
There could yet be more contenders. Nominations for "non-assessed" candidates, where Fonterra farmer-owners can stand with the support of 35 other shareholders, are now open.
This process closes on Friday September 27 - a day after Fonterra's financial results for FY19, deferred from September 12, and if in line with previous company guidance, expected to be ugly.
No profiles for the new candidates are publicly available from either the Fonterra Shareholders' Council or Electionz, the election organisation that has for many years held Fonterra director elections on the council's behalf.
The council referred the Herald's request for candidate details to Electionz chief Warwick Lampp. He declined to supply background material saying it was "for shareholders" and had never been supplied to outsiders.
He suggested Googling the new contenders. Pressed he provided a phone number for Haas, but advised the candidate was overseas and "hard to contact".
Google said Cathy Quinn was an officer of the NZ Order of Merit and senior lawyer with MinterEllisonRuddWatts. She was not available when the director candidates were announced. Given Fonterra's current very public woes and spotlight on its governance, perhaps she could have cleared some space in her diary for inquiries.
Cathy Quinn is an officer of the NZ Order of Merit and senior lawyer with MinterEllisonRuddWatts. Photo / Supplied
When she returned the Herald's call, she said she qualified to seek election under Fonterra's "shareholder" requirement in that she was a trustee of a company that owned two Waikato dairying operations.
Asked what a lawyer could offer a co-operative that had apparently lost direction, Quinn said she was "not just a lawyer".
No other director on the Fonterra board had legal expertise and she had strong commercial skills, she said. Quinn noted her recent appointment to the board of Fletcher Building, now a transtasman company and with a legacy of issues, and that she was a director of other companies with global connections, including Tourism Holdings.
As a trustee of a shareholder she was "very disappointed and unsatisfied" with the performance of Fonterra and wanted to see it turned around. Quinn said she had 30 years experience advising the dairy sector in her role as a lawyer.
As for Philipp Haas, his phone number did not connect.
The Herald understands he is a Swiss-born businessman with interests in South Island dairy farms and the pharmaceutical sector in Europe.
Fonterra is due to report its FY19 financial results on September 26. At this time it will also explain its new business strategy after an internal review.
In August it forecast asset writedowns of about $820m-$860m, expected to result in a reported loss of $590m-$675m, a loss of 37c-42c per share.
Fonterra reported revenue nudging $20 billion last year - along with an historic first annual loss of $196m.
The farmer-cooperative, formed from a dairy industry mega-merger in 2001, has seven farmer-elected directors and four board-appointed directors.
Quinn said "Fonterra election rules are very clear that candidates cannot seek media attention nor is that encouraged".
For "media" read public.
Let's not forget that Fonterra, still with the lion's share of the domestic milk market, is a creature of special 2001 legislation which ducked the approval process of competition watchdog the Commerce Commission, in the name of being a "national champion".
Eighteen years on, it seems the public is still being kept short on facts.
