Big changes for Wesfarmers board

Tuesday, 18 September, 2001 - 22:00
Three of Wesfarmers’ 11 directors will retire in November at the company’s annual general meeting.

Two of the directors, Kevin Hogan and John Paterson, have been board members since 1984 and the third, David Nuttall, has been a member for 10 years.

Messrs Hogan and Paterson have an even longer history with the company, having been directors of Westralian Farmers Cooperative Limited prior to Wesfarmers Limited’s 1984 listing.

Mr Hogan has been Wesfarmers deputy chairman since 1996.

Wesfarmers has appointed Charles Macek as a new director, effective from October 2.

See also page 23.

n Foundation Healthcare has

suffered a battering since reporting earlier this month a $28.5 million loss for the 2000-01 financial year.

An initial 64 per cent plunge from 35 cents to 15 cents accompanied a downgrading by Deutsche Bank to “sell”.

But while Deutsche has reduced its own 8.96 per cent investment (at the release of Foundation’s results) in Foundation twice this month, its holding remains at 6.66 per cent.

Meanwhile Foundation directors Kenneth Jones and Richard Atkins have both boosted their stakes in the company and new managing director Ralph Shreeve has acquired his first 200,000 company shares on market.

n Investment funds managers for

the Commonwealth Bank appear to have been busy of late selling off the institution’s shares in a small group of WA-listed companies.

The bank declined to divulge or comment on its investment strategies, but a CBA spokesperson was keen to point out the bank had some very experienced fund managers.

While this fails to adequately explain why the CBA became a substantial shareholder in Austal Limited on September 6, but then ceased to be one on September 7, whether this puts Austal in the same category as Amtec Limited, in which the CBA has also ceased to be a substantial shareholder, remains a mystery.

Fleetwood Corporation Limited has also lost out a bit, but not entirely, to CBA’s investment strategies.