5 questions lodged at 2026 Stockland (SGP) hybrid AGM

Q1. Thank you to Tom Pockett for his 12 years of service on the Stockland board, including 10 years as chair. It is always helpful for investors to have access to some exiting reflections from retiring independent directors, especially chairs. Could Tom please comment on what he regards as the best decisions he believes Stockland made during his time on the board. And if he had his time again, would he do anything different?

Answer: This was one of only 2 questions that question wrangler Katherine Grace didn't tweak in some form, so slightly regretted giving her this big Twitter plug as proceedings kicked off. Tom Pockett said hiring a great CEO, Tarun Gupta, and management team was amongst his greatest hits. He also said they handled COVID very well. Like 90% of director retirees when asked this question, he offered up no regrets. Watch video of exchange via Twitter.

Q2. PwC has been our external auditor for 14 years. Have we conducted any competitive tenders for the external audit over the past 10 years? Tenders are most often run when there is a mandatory change of partner, as is occurring this year with the proposed switch from Jane Reilly to Jamie Wills. Did we run a full tender this year as part of that handover and, if not, when are we next likely to run an audit tender? Finally, could Jane Reilly please comment on how involved Jamie Wills was on this latest full year audit and when did she know that Jamie would be her successor? Was that a decision of PwC or the Stockland audit committee and what sort of experience does Jamie have with auditing listed property companies?

Answer: Out-going audit signing partner Jane Reilly was never invited to respond. Turns out PwC has never faced a competitive tender during its 14 year run. The Stockland board chose not to tender with this year's 5 yearly partner hand over and that process saw PwC put up 3 candidates in a beauty parade. Stockland chose Jamie Wills to succeed Jane Reilly and he has plenty of listed company experience but was not involved in this year's Stockland audit. Out-going chair Tom Pockett said he has known the incoming audit signing partner for many years, which is no surprise given he was the long term CFO of Woolworths. Watch video of exchange via Twitter.

Q3. Last year's AGM was a much happier affair when our market cap was $15 billion. Today it is down to $10 billion after another 4.4% drop, meaning that we're doing chair succession at what is hopefully the bottom of a downswing caused by rising interest rates and worries about the residential property market after the unexpected tax changes in the Federal budget. How did we run the chair succession process? Was it handled entirely internally? Were there multiple candidates and did we look outside or was Bob Johnston recruited in 2024 with a view to succeeding Tom Pockett as chair at this AGM?

Answer: Good disclosure in this answer. Chair Tom Pockett was it was a comprehensive process run by People Committee chair Melinda Conrad (who mustn't have been a candidate). They had outside help and looked at external candidates before settling on former GPT CEO Bob Johnston, who didn't speak once at the meeting, which was a shame. Watch video of exchange via Twitter.

Q4. A follow up from last year's AGM. Could incoming chair Bob Johnston comment on whether his shareholding in Stockland, which last night stood at 130,000 shares worth 561k, is now more valuable than his shareholding in our competitor GPT, where he was the highly regarded CEO for 8 years who retired in March 2024 with 2.32m shares which would be worth $10.6m if retained to this day. Bob mentioned at last year's AGM that he had sold down his GPT position but it wasn't clear if he had sold out. Could he please provide an update, including on whether he hopes to buy some more Stockland shares during his first year as chair of our company. Finally, will Bob's monthly remuneration as chair be the same as what Tom Pockett was paid in 2025-26?

Answer: New Stockland chair Bob Johnston is getting the same coin as out-going chair Tom Pockett who once again protected him from answering questions about the $10m+ shareholding he had in GPT. Would have been better if Katherine Grace has read this one in pull. For instance, at one Tom Pockett said "I don't know how many shares you own Bob" when he would have known if Katherine hadn't stripped that fact from the submitted question. Watch video of exchange via Twitter.

Q5. Well done for being 1 of just 6 companies on my AGM best practice list offering full hybrids with voting and questions and early proxy disclosure. You're following the agenda, as opposed to just dealing with questions as one job lot. I'm just checking that you'll once again disclose the headcount data in the poll results and publish a full copy of the AGM webcast archive on your website. If so, well done and please keep it up. You're a role model to many others. Could incoming chair Bob Johnston confirm that he will retain all these excellent features at the 2027 AGM. I seek this re-assurance because he used to run physical only AGMs when CEO of GPT.

Answer: Didn't lodge this until saw they were following the agenda but then discovered they weren't taking any general questions at the end, so this didn't get read out but online moderator, presumably Katherine Grace, offered a comment that they plan to continue with their current practices in 2027, subject to any regulatory changes. Watch video of Tom Pockett wrapping up proceedings via Twitter.

Copyright © 2026 The Mayne Report. All rights reserved

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