Terry Campbell's strange request in 2007

By Stephen Mayne
January 17, 2008

Executive chairman Terry Campbell strangely requested the 2007 Mirrabooka AGM be off the record. This was from a subscrriber-only Mayne Report edition.

I've had some strange requests from directors over the years but the recently retired Goldman Sachs-JB Were executive chairman Terry Campbell turned up a beauty at AGM of small cap investment company Mirrabooka earlier this week when he asked that the meeting be treated as off the record.

This was so the investment managers could all stand up and speak frankly about different companies they'd invested in. Mirrabooka was the first time that owning shares in 440 companies actually made for more informed questioning because I was able to get up and say that they were underperforming this year by missing the boat with the mid-cap iron ore stocks and retailers.

Out-going director Russ Fynmore came up after the meeting and said this was spot on. I bought into 100 new stocks during the recent downturn and have made the biggest gains on the iron ore and retail plays. When asked how Mirrabooka had played the downturn, the fund manager could only mutter that they were fully invested at the time and had "nibbled on a few Coca Cola Amatil shares".

Coke is just inside the top 50 so this so-called small caps company isn't even meant to hold it at all.

There are another four JB Were listed investment company AGMs coming up and the main game will be attempting to stop AFIC from voting its large holding of News Corp shares against my shareholder resolution on the basis that News Corp is a major investment banking client of Goldman Sachs.

That's all for now.

Do ya best, Stephen Mayne