5 questions lodged at 2025 NAB hybrid AGM

Q1. Westpac gloated at its AGM yesterday that it had the most banking experience on its board of any Australian bank. What does Phil Chronican think about this claim and does he agree that his successor should be a career banker? Also, does Phil believe the next NAB chair is currently on the board?

Answer: The chair Phil Chronican said banking experience was important but not mandatory with a chair and he summarised the existing banking background of directors. Watch video of exchange via Twitter.

Q2. In Scandinavia, any shareholder who owns more than 5% of a public company is entitled to be appointed to the nomination committee. As the director running the chair succession process, how is Kathryn Fagg going to handle shareholder input and suggestions. Also, are we using a recruitment firm and is the search looking outside the current group of directors, which is what happened at Westpac when Steven Gregg was appointed chair from outside.

Answer: The chair Phil Chronican confirmed that they are considering external candidates with the assistance of an external search firm which has been retained for the past 2-3 years. Watch video of exchange via Twitter.

Q3. The Westpac AGM was a shemozzle yesterday because they didn't disclose the proxies early as you have done today and they didn't follow the agenda so we had one single 3 hour debate session which was all over the place with no focus. Thank you for following the agenda to keep some focus on the discussion. When disclosing the outcome of the voting today, including on this rem report item, will you disclose the headcount data revealing how many shareholders voted for and against? Also, well done for getting such strong support on the rem report today.

Answer: In terms of disclosing head count data, it sounded like the chair and company secretary had a different view. Chair Phil Chronican seemingly wants to do it but they didn't come through in the end as can be seen in these poll results. Watch video of exchange via Twitter.

Q4. After 18 months in the top job, could CEO Andrew Irvine please summarise the extent and breadth of engagement he has with analysts, brokers, fund managers and institutional investors after each 6 monthly results release to the ASX? How does that compare with the time and effort put into engaging with NAB's loyal and sticky retail shareholders? Are NAB's retail shareholders getting a fair share of the attention? For instance, retail shareholder voting participation has crashed to below 3% since the move away from paper after COVID. How hard did we try to get retail shareholders to attend and vote at today's AGM? Finally, thank you for offering live online voting today, another fail that Westpac didn't do yesterday?

Answer: The CEO provided a good summary of his engagement with big end of town shareholder and the top table offered some platitudes about caring for their retail shareholders. Watch video of exchange via Twitter.

Q5. In May 2020, NAB panicked as COVID hit and did an excessively large $3b fixed price placement at $14.15 for big end of town investors followed by an unfairly capped $500m Share Purchase Plan for its nearly 500,000 retail shareholders. In the end, 155,000 shareholders applied for $2.9b worth of stock and the board lifted the SPP cap to $1.25 billion and refunded $1.65b. The treatment was even worse in 2009 when NAB stuck to its $750 million SPP cap after receiving $2.6b in applications. Is chair Phil Chronican proud of the fact NAB holds the record for the two biggest SPP refunds in Australian history. Why does our bank find it so difficult to accept cash from its retail shareholders, handing back an incredible $3.5 billion across these two SPPs. Doesn't this just confirm how biased Australia's capital raising system is against retail shareholders and don't you owe your retail shareholders a make good SPP?

Answer: The chair Phil Chronican was regretful and said he's been more careful with capital management in recent years. Watch video of exchange via Twitter.

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