RE: Kicking off31 Jan 2024 11:04
Speak for yourself mate. I care. The problem is: if the majority of shareholders continue to publicly express satisfaction with the current state of affairs, which they do by regularly approving messages asserting that the company’s best approach is to avoid all communication with shareholders, it validates that position and disincentivises reestablishing lines of communication.
Ricardo is right. Even when a company is subject to regulatory scrutiny, it can be difficult to determine the operations of a company and the motivations of directors. Every shareholder has to approach an investment with a huge dose of skepticism because money is constantly at risk. In this circumstance we have multitudes of evidence demonstrating that the company hasn’t historically worked in the best interest of shareholders and now we are expected to divine the company’s intentions from messages conveyed by an anonymous third party? Gimme a break.
We don’t even have anything to substantiate the claim, which has become accepted on this board without any evidence, that the company can’t communicate due to some unspecified legal threat.
I’ve never heard of anything like that before. I can’t even really think of a good reason why that might be the case. Any entity connected, or in conflict, with the company will be aware of the existence of shareholders and this board is public so all the ‘sleuthed’ information can be easily accessed.
I don’t have any answers about how to change the situation but it is clear the answer isn’t: every shareholders should independently try to establish a private link the company. This perpetuates an information asymmetry and neuters the advantage we have as a large engaged shareholder base.
Personally I don’t see any problem with drafting a letter undersigned by the hundreds (?) of active shareholders demanding a basic level of formal communication and presenting it to the company via the supposedly verified channel. The suggestion that by applying pressure on the company to reestablish communication could harm our prospects is strange, even suspicious, and there are plenty of reasons why it could be done for nefarious reasons.