Summary of exchanges at 2025 Sigma Pharmaceuticals hybrid AGM
December 1, 2025
Below are the audio grabs taken from the webcast archive of the 80 minute 2025 Sigma Pharmaceuticals hybrid AGM which attended in person at The Sofitel in Melbourne at 2pm on October 22, 2025. There were 14 items on the agenda and got up 5 times, asking 2-4 questions each time. See notice of meeting and voting results. Market cap was $35b on AGM day. The proxies were not disclosed early in the formal addresses. Also, see wrap of the action from scheme meeting approving the Chemist Warehouse reverse takeover in January 2025. The failed attempt to get Mario Verrocchi talking about future share sales was mentioned in this AFR feature on the $7 billion man 6 weeks after the AGM. He sure can talk colourfully, just never at AGMs it seems.
Opening general business session at the microphone on AGM procedure, escrow arrangements, founder sell downs and enterprise agreements.
The 3 Chemist Warehouse founders are locked up retaining 90% of their combined pre-merger stakes until August 2026, then can can dump the entire $15b. Opening question at Sigma AGM asked what it would take to change this. Straight bat from chair. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
Amazed that the Sigma board has never had a discussion about billionaire Chemist Warehouse founder sell downs and that no one corrected my repeated errors at the AGM about the scale of sell downs so far. It's half of what's allowable under terms of escrow not the full 10%. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
Asking Sigma chair Michael Sammells to summarise the proxy adviser recommendations and reveal if there had been any protest votes. He should have disclosed the proxies earlier with the formal addresses lodged with the ASX. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
Chemist Warehouse has a colourful history when it comes to staff pay and unions. The Sigma chair played a very straight “business as usual” bat when asked about any important Enterprise Agreements expiring in the next 12 months. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
Remuneration report
How did Sigma manage to go 18 months after a remuneration strike before holding a second strike vote? It's unique and a got a waiver from ASIC/ASX, it seems. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
Curious as to why one of the Gance Chemist Warehouse founders took open undirected proxies into the AGM. In this exchange the chair seemed to suggest these 1.3 billion votes were open with him. They were voted in favour of all items besides one of the 2 rem reports. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
Gave Sigma a good explanation as to why they should release head count voting data to respect the 35,000 retail shareholders. Nope, they let the 3 Chemist Warehouse billionaires dominate with their circa 5 billion votes. Why do retail shareholders even bother? Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
Mario Verrocchi's incentive grant
The only protest vote at last week's Sigma AGM was $1.5b worth of stock - remember this is a $35.6b company - against billionaire Mario Verrocchi's totally pointless and unnecessary LTI grant. Therefore, asked chair Michael Sammells to explain the issue. And he did. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
A long speech about Mario Verrocchi's LTI grant & Sigma sell down intentions. Enjoyed giving the greedy Murdoch men a slap for taking $2b in pay from gerrymandered public companies over 25 years. Urged Mario to work for free like Kerry & James Packer. Sadly, he didn't respond. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
You can tell Sigma chair Michael Sammells was once CFO of Medibank & Healthscope. He was right across the numbers in summarising the debate about what makes a good stretch target for full vesting of Mario Verrocchi's incentive grant. Not that the $5b man needs any more free shares. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
This was the Sigma chair's worst answer during the solid half hour Q&A. I asked billionaire Mario Verrocchi not to accept future LTI grants & to explain his future sell down intentions. Mr Sammells claimed Mario didn't ask for LTI - he could have said no. He said nothing all AGM. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
Re-election of Neville Mitchell
Gave former Cochlear CFO Neville Mitchell a brickbat at the Sigma AGM for failing to put up a rem report vote at Fisher & Paykel, a $19b giant across the ditch which he chairs. Pathetic that Sigma chair Michael Sammells protected him from answering this related parties question. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
If only Solly Lew and the Myer directors were as open and transparent about related party transactions as this situation with the billionaire Chemist Warehouse founders, as Sigma chair Michael Sammells explained in this answer at last week's 80 minute hybrid AGM at The Sofitel. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
When the fix is in & the board decides a chair will monopolise all responses to AGM Q&A, there is often no way around it. Why did Sigma waste shareholder funds putting fixed microphones in front of multiple directors if election candidate Neville Mitchell wouldn't answer this? Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
Re-election of Annette Carey
Whilst he overly monopolised AGM question answering, these insights from the Sigma chair Michaels Sammells on the sensitive issue of board composition were good. He gets it and gives straight accurate answers that make sense when facing a run of without notice questions. Listen to audio of exchange via Twitter.
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