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Old 12th May 2008, 06:18
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A. Le Rhone
 
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But the biggest concern was (and somebody has raised it here before):

Within 1 week of the deal collapsing Dixon came up with unprecedented and dramatic new plans for the entire group including seeling the whole fleet to a third party and selling the Frequent Flyer scheme.

Within a few days of the collapse!

So at best this was a hastily thought out knee-jerk plan for which the board were trying to deflect their guilt over the Allco stuff-up. What confidence can shareholders have in a board that makes such rapid 'cover-up' decisions. They need to be held accountable for this and replacement board-members installed who take methodical and informed decisions, no sound-bite friendly PR stunts.

At worst (and I suspect the reality of the situation), these plans were already in place before the bid-failed and Dixon chose only to release them after the event in order to deflect criticism and restore some semblance of his control. But this means the board were witholding elements of the takeover that were critical to shareholders decision-making. Such witholding of information must surely attract the attention of ASIC. Is that not a criminal activity?

Unless I'm missing something, I can't see why Dixon, Jackson et al aren't being investigated at all levels of the law for witholding critical shareholder information. What's stopping this? Happy to be corrected on factual errors.
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