Perpetual, Allco, Murdoch and Becton

Monday, October 29, 2007, 12.30am

Dear Mayne Report subscribers and assorted extras,

Apologies this is the first update since New York but I've been swamped since arriving home at 8am on Tuesday and have only just started to catch up with things.

ALLCO AND KKR VIDEOS

The Allco Finance Group AGM was a cracker on Friday – well worth the trip to Sydney, as this coverage in The SMH suggests.

In terms of having an impact at an AGM, it was of the 10 best I've been involved with.

Allco chairman David Coe is the king of financial complexity and the market has fallen right out of love with his approach, which involves loads of Macquarie-style funds that are seeded with assets from Allco, all for a big fat fee, of course.

Check out the video we made about this.

There's also a video recorded out the front of KKR's New York office in an attempt to win some votes at the forthcoming WA News AGM.

MURDOCH RESOLUTION WASH-UP

All up, the News Corp resolution was a thoroughly worthwhile exercise and I'll be doing exactly the same thing next year.

There were always three key yardsticks to measure its success: voting support, media coverage and the debate at the meeting itself. All three went very well, especially the media, although it was disappointing not to crack a mention in anything printed in New York.

The coverage in Australia was excellent, especially on the ABC which gave the story a run on Saturday AM, ABC television news and Inside Business. I also did radio interviews from JFK airport in New York on the way home with Tim Cox for ABC Tasmania and Virginia Trioli for ABC Sydney.

Most of the media coverage has been summarised here. I've also written another piece for the FT's Alphaville blog explaining where the campaign goes from here.

Rupert is coming to Adelaide for his annual Australian shareholder information meeting on 13 November and we've already booked the flights.

CRANKING IT UP AGAINST PERPETUAL

This interesting email came through last week:

Hi Stephen,

I will make this as brief as possible. I am the Independent Candidate in Wentworth, Investment banker, environmental advocate and p*ssed off investor in Perpetual and a wholesale industrial investor. I have been lobbying Perpetual on Gunns since March, to no avail.

I will be at the Perpetual AGM on Tuesday and going to try and get the press there as they like my story (I am trying to kill off the part about being the ex girlfriend of the Labor candidate George Newhouse).

Any ideas? I am not sure that I can get a question up at the AGM missed cut off for various reasons, including that I was standing.

The Wilderness Society will be there as well. Have you any ideas?

The press will probably come if I say I am having a press conference at The Westin......I was hoping you will be there as well......don't know what your position will be and I do not want to taint you as I am now political but I want to put as much pressure and heat on Perpetual this AGM. They quite frankly have been rude and dismissive and I am not a small investor......and their support of Gunns is abhorrent, bad business.

Any ideas and thoughts welcome. Not trying to steal your thunder just trying to help make the public more aware.

Regards, Dani Ecuyer

I'd been toying with attending the Perpetual AGM but since Eric Beecher and Alan Kohler's new venture Business Spectator is being launched in Sydney on Tuesday, the flights have now been booked.

Indeed, I've even arranged Ms Ecuyer a proxy so she can speak at the Perpetual AGM, which starts at 11am at The Westin, plus tipped off The Chaser boys given there's likely to be a noisy protest out the front and plenty of media.

The timing of a one day trip to Sydney works well because my fortnightly spot with Virginia Trioli on 702 ABC Sydney finishes by 10am and I'll be able to do a scene setter for Perpetual which should be very interesting given they are the largest shareholder in Gunns.

I've had a number of emails suggesting a big turn up by Green groups and politicians after writing this piece for Crikey on 11 October.

SHARE PURCHASE PLANS

This morning I'll be hitting the annual meeting of Becton at the RACV in Melbourne to pursue them for ignoring small shareholders after doing a recent institutional placement at $4.25 and then failing to offer us little fish the same deal.

The issue was the subject of our second Mayne Report video

This email exchange explains the background:

EMAIL TO BECTON ON SPPs

Could someone please pass this message onto Max Beck and Hamish McDonald.

I hope Becton is not going to join the very small club of ASX 300 members (Transpacific, QBE and ABC Learning are the major recent offenders) who do a major placement to institutions, but don't offer the same deal to their small shareholder by way of a share purchase plan.

I own Australia's biggest small share portfolio – 410 stocks worth just $150,000 – and track these things.

Please join the likes of Macquarie Bank, United Group, Nexus Energy, AGL, Macquarie Countrywide, Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group, Origin Energy etc who at least offer their small shareholders an SPP on the same terms after a major capital raising.

Macquarie clearly believes in SPPs in its own vehicles and did handle your recent placement.

An SPP is normally announced at the same time as the placement but Arrow Energy provides the template for you when the detail of its SPP was announced a few days after a recent placement.

I hope you see the light and we don't have to further this debate at the forthcoming Becton AGM.

Regards, Stephen Mayne
Very happy Becton shareholder, founder www.crikey.com and shareholder activist

BECTON RESPONSE

From: Brenton Hausner [mailto: bhausner@becton.com.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 5 September 2007 5:46 PM
To: smayne@crikey.com.au
Subject: RE: what about us small shareholders

Dear Stephen,

Thank you for your note regarding share purchase plan arrangements for Becton's retail investors, which I have passed on to Hamish and Max at your request.

Becton has a strong philosophy of focussing on the interests of all shareholders, including retail shareholders, as evidenced by our track record in capital raisings. For example, in our restructure and recapitalisation last November, all existing shareholders received a priority on their applications over new investors. We also recently introduced a dividend reinvestment plan (DRP) to enable shareholders to increase their holding in Becton brokerage free and had nearly 1,000 shareholders out of a total of just over 2,500 elect to participate in that DRP.

In relation to last week's capital raising, Becton required a level of certainty around the equity raising outcome in order to take advantage of a unique acquisition opportunity to benefit all shareholders. The short timeframe that Becton was faced with made it uncommercial to consider an SPP.

I hope the above addresses your concerns.

Kind regards

Matt Reid
Investor Relations and Mergers & Acquisitions Manager

Becton really have no excuse and we'll report back on how it goes.

Do ya best, Stephen Mayne