Unlucky winners dive for cover

By DANIEL RIORDAN

The Shareholders Association's Golden Glob Awards will be an annual event, although recipients missed the opportunity to take their trophies home after Wednesday's Air New Zealand annual meeting.

Association chairman Bruce Sheppard awarded the Golden Glob for Best Villain to the airline's former executive chairman Sir Selwyn Cushing and the "Brierley Bunch" for "a commendable performance of self-interest and wanton disregard for anyone else's interest".

The Government ran a close second, but deputy chairman Jim Farmer, who secured the airline's survival with a Government bailout, earned a Hero Award.

Yesterday Mr Sheppard confessed that it had been difficult to offload Golden Globs in any category after the meeting.

Sir Selwyn did not attend and Bill Wilson, the sole Brierley representative on the airline's slimmed down board, "did a bunk immediately".

"For a Victim Award, we thought about the Singapore Airlines guy [director C. K. Cheong]. He was the only one we could present it to because the Ansett workers didn't make it over and the small shareholders were too diverse a bunch of teeth-gnashers.

"But he'd disappeared. So the only one left was Jimmy [Farmer], and Jimmy wasn't brave enough to take it home either."

Mr Sheppard said that although Air New Zealand was the clear winner for abysmal corporate performance this year, there were other sterling performances down the list.

"The really appalling ones? The Fletcher Group, and Brierley, which should probably have a standing award.

"Trans Tasman Properties for its aborted special general meeting when it tried to rape and pillage shareholders by converting them all into debt instruments and failed. As a dirty, tricky move, that probably deserves an award."

IT Capital was another disaster, said Mr Sheppard, although it dropped down the list by obtaining US chief executive Jeff Dittus' resignation shortly after the annual meeting.

"But anyone who can pay himself $900,000 for producing a loss deserves some sort of recognition."